Maybe you’re a bibliophile. Maybe you love the idea of rare, incredibly expensive novels lining the wooden shelves of your library. Maybe you have money to burn. Or, maybe you’re just ridiculous.
Yesterday I was cruising around on Amazon, checking out my book, my ranking, my reviews when I noticed a few online vendors had picked up The Milestone Tapes for their stores. Amazing! I was excited, so I clicked on the list. 99% were normal, prices were average for print. Then … I came upon Invise.
Apparently Invise (with it’s 92% satisfaction rating) has decided my book is worth … make sure you’re sitting down when you read this … $888.00 + tax + shipping. I had to laugh. If you buy a book for damn near $900.00 you can’t even get free shipping? COME ON!
But in all seriousness … I think this is probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen a lot of stupid in my day!). NO ONE should ever pay that much for my book … and I’m almost embarrassed a seller has the balls to ask for that price.
I don’t know how Invise came up with this price … but however they did, they should really, really consider figuring out another method.
My first guess would be a case of a misplaced decimal. Surely — surely! — they had to mean $8.88. I haven’t read a book yet I’d be willing to pay over a hundred dollars for, never mind eight times that!
Right, you’d think so. But I looked into it a little more … rarely is something like that a mistake, it boils down to how the computers/systems they use intake the novel. But, no matter what, it’s plain old stupid.
I have some queries into Amazon about these people and similar re-sellers. I have no problem with people buying and selling my books. We depend on this. This seller claims to have 10 copies of my book in stock. But I have received no royalties for these. There are 2 possibilities – either this “seller” is lying about having them in stock or amazon is withholding royalties (which they dont do). Looks to me like its probably a guy living in a basement gaming the amazon system takes them 30 seconds to add a product to their online store – they do this all day long and build up a massive (virtual) “inventory: and they make enough from this to make it worthwhile.