It's September - what are you reading?

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It is amazing some of the prices that some people think they can get from collectors just because an edition is out of print, while somewhere else a copy of the exact same edition may cost next to nothing.

However, of all the unrealistic prices I have ever seen ... you are right, it is ridiculous.
 
There are plenty of ridiculous prices in the secondary seller market on Amazon, not all of them for books that are rare or out of print. I've never managed to work out what's going on there, unless sellers are just hoping that someone accidentally hits "order with one click", which you can't cancel with a secondary seller (though you could send the book back for a refund). It's often puzzled me. What I am (almost) sure of, however, is that the seller does not expect the book to genuinely sell for that.
 
Perhaps they have multiple copies, put one up for silly money, and then have the others priced high (but less than the extortionate top price) in a bid to make the high price look reasonable?
 
That kind of reasoning would work if the higher price were only a few quid higher, but £4011.44? (How is that number even arrived at? It looks automated, or a mistake.) Plus in this case there are no other copies for sale.

BTW, I've learned from a friend that a lot of secondary sellers offering the same product at different prices are actually the same company, and they only have one book between them.
 
They pricing is an automated system. You enter a range that you want to sell at. When you forget to set a top end and have it set to match the top price, all you need is someone else to do the same.

Amazon usually removes the crazy priced items after a short period. If it happens too often the seller will get dinged by Amazon in their seller rating.

Others set a high price (just not crazy high) assuming that they can find it elsewhere and supply it that way.
 
HareBrain said:
There are plenty of ridiculous prices in the secondary seller market on Amazon, not all of them for books that are rare or out of print. I've never managed to work out what's going on there, unless sellers are just hoping that someone accidentally hits "order with one click", which you can't cancel with a secondary seller (though you could send the book back for a refund). It's often puzzled me. What I am (almost) sure of, however, is that the seller does not expect the book to genuinely sell for that.
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Shuffles in. Mostly, they're doing exactly what you're mentioning and hoping for a gullible hit, especially if the author is one people look for - I see it a lot with Seamus Heaney,for instance (i collect Irish limiteds, so keep an eye in the market.) The way to find out what something is actually work is view by completed listings and see what they sold for.

So sf reading. Well, i have Indigo Heartfire by Jo maryatt in my kindle app, nicely uploaded, so it's being read when out and about, with Beautiful Intelligence by Stephen Palmer is up next, and then Teresa's Hobgoblin Night is planned.

Then, since it was my husband's last day at the bookstore with 50% discount yesterday (swopping for one with 30% so I'm no pity) i had a buying spree and now have The Minuaturist by Jessie Burton, Mother of Eden by Chris Beckett and It's a long way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. In addition, he picked up a Tom Holt and The Day of the Triffids from the local train station's swop shelves.

I'll get to all this after I've finished Marcus Sedgewick's The Foreshadowing from the library, which I'm enjoying. I also have a Marian Keyes to get to for lighter moments.

So, um, see you all in a couple of months, :D
 
Hard to tear myself away from P. G. Wodehouse, now reading Ring for Jeeves.
 
Finished Crucible Zero by Devon Monk. Decent end to a interesting trilogy.

Trying a couple of Urban Fantasy titles. Clean by Alex Hughes and then Dark Currents by Jacqueline Carey
 
Just started Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson. I realized that I have never read a sci fi the same year it came out and thought I would give it a try. I had been meaning to read him but hadn't got around to it yet. It's interesting but I am still getting used to his writing style in this book. Anyone else read this yet?

By the way, how many Hugo winner readers think the runner ups were better in many or most of the years? I have not yet read enough of them to comment myself but the remedy is a ten year project (or more).
 
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AndrewT said:
By the way, how many Hugo winner readers think the runner ups were better in many or most of the years? I have not yet read enough of them to comment myself but the remedy is a ten year project (or more).
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Here's a list of winners and runners-up for each year. I'm certain there was a better novel than They'd Rather Be Right for the 1955 award, but no official runners-up are listed, so I'll limit myself to those from this list.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Award_for_Best_Novel

For the period with which I am familiar (1950's-very early 1980's), I have very few disagreements with the winners. I think I would go with Dying Inside or The Book of Skulls in 1973, but I'm a fanatic for early 1970's Silverberg. I probably would have gone with On Wings of Song in 1980.

After that year I can only tell which of the few runners-up I have read which I thought were better than the few winners I have read (if that makes any sense.)

I'd go with Blood Music over Ender's Game.

I'd go with Red Mars over Doomsday Book.
 
Victoria Silverwolf said:
Here's a list of winners and runners-up for each year. I'm certain there was a better novel than They'd Rather Be Right for the 1955 award, but no official runners-up are listed, so I'll limit myself to those from this list.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Award_for_Best_Novel
...
For the period with which I am familiar (1950's-very early 1980's), I have very few disagreements with the winners.
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I have a lot more than you, but relatively few for the period I think the awards made sense which is that same period.

Budrys got shafted by Catholics twice. :) I'd go with Who over A Case of Conscience and Rogue Moon over A Canticle for Leibowitz. The first may be an excessive fondness for Budrys but the second I'd stick by anyway.

I'd pick Nova over Stand on Zanzibar (boy was that an underwhelming year - could have gone to the un-nominated Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep or even Schmitz's The Demon Breed (or, I hope, Harness' The Ring of Ritornel, but I haven't read it yet) but no book sticks out as a "must win an award" book).

I'd go with Tau Zero over Ringworld, actually.

Man Plus! Man Plus! I'd go with any of the other nominees over Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (hoping, in the case of Shadrach, which is also in the Pile) but Man Plus really should have won. (It did win the Nebula, which is backwards. If Where Late was going to win anything, it should have won the Nebula.)

The Faded Sun: Kesrith doesn't stand alone, but I'd still pick it over Dreamsnake.

I'd pick Lord Valentine's Castle over The Snow Queen.

The Robots of Dawn over Startide Rising. (Surprise, surprise.)

Agreed with Blood Music over Ender's Game. (I wouldn't mind something taking Doomsday Book's place and Red Mars was the best of the Mars books, but A Fire Upon the Deep won, which is all I really care about.)

Probably Marooned in Realtime (maybe Count Zero - hey, two peas in a pod, so it's hard to decide) over Speaker for the Dead. (Another underwhelming year.)

And now it becomes pointless to list, because it becomes overwhelmingly common. But, before the Card double-double (they won Nebulas, too) it's something like eight out of twenty-seven, and only a couple of really strong disagreements (Rogue Moon, Man Plus).

Although I can't detail them all, I will say that, of my post-Neuromancer disagreements, Worldcon not picking Queen of Angels over The Vor Game is the biggest crime of the 1988-2000 conventions, IMO. After 2000 they've all apparently lost their minds and it becomes pointless to contemplate.

(Can mods "dupe" posts? cgsmith's #66 post should probably be copied into a new thread (because it's certainly relevant here but seems to have sparked a lot of specific commentary) and all the posts on it since should probably be split out into that (because they're neat but kind of off-topic).)
 
Extollager said:
Current reading ....David McDaniel's The Monster Wheel Affair, another of his Man from U. N. C. L. E. books from the 1960s and the eighth in the series of paperback novels published by Ace.
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This was pretty decent late-night light entertainment. In general the author caught the tone of the better UNCLE telepays, with a bit of a tongue-in-cheek manner but not camp.
 
Finished When The Devil Dances by John Ringo, Book 3 of the Posleen War series. Good book. Enjoyed it. Long though.

Started Days of Rage by Brad Taylor, Book 6 of the Pike Logan series.
 
DG Jones said:
Reading Inish Carraig by Jo at the mo, and then have some Thomas Ligotti lined up. I also plan to read the Sherlock Holmes novel His Last Bow.
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Actually, this isn't a novel, but a story collection.

At the moment, revisiting Cabell's From the Hidden Way and The Jewel Merchants. As things are about to change for me, I'll be finishing off the Biography in bits and pieces while moving on to other things; first off is likely to be Smith's The Double Shadow -- a reprint of the original brochure mentioned by HPL in Supernatural Horror in Literature....
 
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