about Amazon.com for technical books
On Feb 14, 2007, at 4:55 PM, Nancy Diessner wrote:This is something else I've said before but, especially as a self-published author, I say it again.... We see now a world which reflexively looks for any title no matter how obscure, technical, specialized, etc. at amazondotcom. Which, given that most sources will have websites that make finding those books elsewhere easier than ever, seems... regrettable. For many reasons, even aside from putting more specialized book sources out of business. I note (again) that Amazondotcom for a single book order (assuming THEY knew the source) demands 60% off the list price, IN ADDITION to the source paying the cost to ship it to them. I believe I explained this in terms of my own book -- which would have had to be $36 just to break even via AmazonDotCom. (Not that it isn't worth twice that, but that wasn't my plan.) And it doesn't matter with, say, your average novel with 200 pages of print, because the cost to print per book is probably $1, and the book is priced in the twenties, so there's still profit. (I think I did read that Amazondotcom stock had dropped -- tho maybe that was google.) Anyway -- and I'm guessing here, since the book mentioned is unknown to me -- when price has been set a while back, for a technical book with a small market and a lot of labor, especially when markup has been kept modest to make it available, say to starving artists, or ivory tower inventors.... it would be cheaper to burn them than ship to Amazondotcom. There's also the tiny fact that even in NYC independent book stores go out of business almost daily. We might say that in the wide open country it's better for the environment to buy the book from Amazondotcom than go out in the gas guzzler to look for it -- and the postal service or UPS comes your way anyway, but then you won't have ANY bookstores left -- if that matters. (Besides which, we still have the telephone, as well as the aforementioned web.) Sorry to be so crabby, well, I'm not really sorry... We have snow here and freezing winds and the streets have NOT been plowed and I slogged through the snowbanks in my clogs to go up to College Art -- I sure wish I could have shipped some of our brown snow to those poor polar bears... but things are pretty bad when MIDTOWN doesn't get plowed. (Years ago when Queens didn't get plowed they made such a stink it toppled a mayor...so we figure all the snowplows are still in Queens... and HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!) Judy
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