{"id":4189,"date":"2014-05-31T10:52:20","date_gmt":"2014-05-31T08:52:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hanshafner.de\/blog\/?p=4189"},"modified":"2014-05-31T10:52:20","modified_gmt":"2014-05-31T08:52:20","slug":"used-books-and-money-left-on-the-street","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hanshafner.de\/blog\/2014\/05\/31\/used-books-and-money-left-on-the-street\/","title":{"rendered":"Used books and money left on the street"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have to get something off my chest that has bothered me for quite some time. To start I have to mention that my cousin wrote the\u00a0fantastic book “Albtraum Sicherheit –\u00a0Interessen und Gesch\u00e4fte hinter der Sicherheitspolitik<\/a>” (nightmare security – interests and business behind\u00a0the politics of security). The book was available on Amazon from day one and also from day one there were offers for \u20ac 0,99 cents of used copies of the book. Leaving the question aside where those used copies came\u00a0from I want to focus on a more capitalistic aspect of those used books.<\/p>\n

Let’s suppose a book costs \u20ac 12.99 on the day it is published. Right next to it, Amazon allows a third party store to sell used books. These\u00a0used books typically start at\u00a0\u20ac 0.99 + \u20ac 3.00 shipping.<\/p>\n

Why does the used book seller not operate with the following equation in mind:<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u20ac 12.99 cost of the new book
\n– \u20ac \u00a0 3.00 shipping
\n– \u20ac \u00a0 3.90\u00a0(30% discount towards the price of the new book, assumed a mint condition)
\n————
\n\u20ac \u00a06.09<\/p>\n

This\u00a0means that even with a 30% discount towards the original price of the book the used book seller could have a 5 times\u00a0higher revenue<\/strong> to the tune of \u20ac 6.09 – \u20ac 0.99 = \u20ac 5.10<\/strong><\/p>\n

Can someone please explain to me, how it\u00a0makes sense financially to leave this money on the table? You would still undercut the new version of the book. You would not even have to share the extra revenue with the author or the publisher (which I personally think is a shame, but that’s a different story).<\/p>\n

Please leave a comment to get me to understand the thinking behind this!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have to get something off my chest that has bothered me for quite some time. To start I have to mention that my cousin wrote the\u00a0fantastic book “Albtraum Sicherheit –\u00a0Interessen und Gesch\u00e4fte hinter der Sicherheitspolitik” (nightmare security – interests and business behind\u00a0the politics of security). The book was available on Amazon from day one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[205,119],"class_list":["post-4189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-2","tag-economics","tag-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hanshafner.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hanshafner.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hanshafner.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hanshafner.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hanshafner.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4189"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.hanshafner.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4192,"href":"https:\/\/www.hanshafner.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4189\/revisions\/4192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hanshafner.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hanshafner.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hanshafner.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}