What I'm reading lately

[evwhore]

Today I received Game Misconduct: Alan Eagleson and the Corruption of Hockey which I bought via Alibris. I'm trying to figure out the economics of this (the book purchase, not Eagleson's corruptness): I paid $17, plus $1.23 tax and $3.99 S&H. The copy I chose came from a book seller in Canada. The total postage on the package is C$10.70,

Comments

[captaino]

I like speaking in italics too.

[evwhore]

I already fixed it in between your reading the entry and clicking on "comment", you twit :-)

[wild_irises]

Most likely: the book came into the Canadian store in a bag or box of 15-40 books, for which the bookseller paid $15-25.

Next most likely: the bookseller paid nothing, but gave the previous owner store credit.

Possible: the book came in over the counter by itself or with just a couple of others, and the seller got maybe $5 for the lot.

The big problem with bookselling is not selling books; it's what to do with all the ones that don't sell so that you have the ones that do sell. It's the sheer size of the inventory that screws up the economics the most.

I'm not sure how alibris works, but I can't imagine that they take $3.99 per transaction; no bookseller could tolerate it.

[evwhore]

I'm not sure how alibris works, but I can't imagine that they take $3.99 per transaction; no bookseller could tolerate it.

Depends who the $3.99 comes from, doesn't it? What if the bookseller says to Alibris "We'll take $X for this book" and Alibris charges me, the purchaser, $X+$3.99?

[hector31]

The Schultz family has a different opinion of the book, as you'd expect. Consider Monte Schultz's long blog reply here (start with "Monte Schulz says", on 10-15-07):

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/books/more-on-the-schulz-book#comment-34417

[evwhore]

I've just spent the last hour or so clicking around, reading various threads, comments from the family, etc. Fascinating stuff.

On the other side there's stuff like thisIt's one big mystery to me now. It certainly seems damning that so many of Schulz's family and people he worked with say there are inaccuracies in Michaelis's book, errors, omissions and things taken out of context. Which makes it stranger still that they didn't voice stronger objections before the book came out (Monte's statement that it would have required to much reworking and he didn't think Michaelis would go for it seems tepid and unconvincing to me) and they won't take legal action now, they respect his First Amendment right, etc. I mean, it's great they aren't contributing to our litigious society, but it seems weird that they're all worked up about this on the Internet but then that's the extent of it

[pfrimshot]

Huh.. I'd never heard of Alibris, but back in Victoria I had a few friends working for ABE, which was often billed to the UVic Engineering/CSC dept as a home-grown success. A quick search of "ABE vs. Alibris" seems to favour Alibris slightly, but neither seems to be doing well vs. Amazon.