people are nuts-o

[dominanefret.livejournal.com]

Due to the fact that I am a broke college student (well, community college) paying my own bills for the first time, I have decided to sell off all of my darling Laurell K. Hamilton books on E-bay.
I own Guilty Pleasure through Incubus Dreams, and the first three Merry Gentry books, and my copy of Incubus Dreams is apparently a first edition. (Not that that matters to me.)

Pretending to be a savvy e-bayer (I've sold all of two things on e-bay in the past, both used text books, and I have one think for sale right now - which no one has bid on.) I decided to do some research and see what lots of her books are going for.

And I must say, it amazes me how much people are willing to pay for lots of her used, previously read books. I'm seeing lots of 12-16 of her books going for 50 - 80+ dollars. Nothing special about them or anything, no signatures, no first editions. This is so strange to me.

Anyone else agree?

Or anyone have any insight?

Comments

[x--shameless.livejournal.com]

Dude, what? No way would I spend that much money on the series.

*pets ebooks*

[rinkori.livejournal.com]

What? How bizarre. Maybe the hardcovers are harder to find now? Or are you looking at (egad) paperback prices?

[dominanefret.livejournal.com]

Most of these lots are all paperback. Some have one, maybe two hardcover. It's absurd.

[pith]

Only thing I can think of is that with the various reprints, people are either a) collecting or b) caught in reprint limbo in which certain titles may be hard to find, so they buy lots just to get the certain titles they need.

[mhalachaiswords.livejournal.com]

Maybe if you're desperate enough to get the whole set (or those few you don't have), you're willing to pay that much?

I don't really know. There are authors for whom I'd pay that much (new), but if I was going to do that I'd buy from a bookstore so the author got some money for it.

The only thing I can think of is that the buyers may not be in areas with well-stocked bookstores and if you do the math (16 books for $80 is still $5 a book) it might be cheaper this way than buying new.

However, none of this impacts upon the point that people are still spending cash money on these books. Yeesh.

[alex-lebeau.livejournal.com]

I don't think I'd pay that much new, but I'm also cheap as hell. If I can buy one book say, each paycheck, even if it's more expensive in the long run, I'll do it.

Also: There's A Rat In The Kitchen. The other titles are meh. :D

[quizzicalsphinx.livejournal.com]

One word: brainwashing.

[alex-lebeau.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's a set of the old cover editions? (I.E. not the sucky photo covers they started with Obsidian Butterfly.) If that's the case, I'm almost tempted to dump mine, and I hate dumping books; I know at some point, I'll want to read it again. All of mine up to OB are original edition paperback.

[moonsinger.livejournal.com]

You can get the latest book, The Harlequin, used for $11.00 on Amazon, so I don't see why people would be paying a ton of money on Ebay. The price on the other books used is less than the new price on the others books I saw as well. If you are looking to price them, look at how the Amazon used sellers priced their books. Most of the people who sell books are used book dealers.

[bubblefaerie.livejournal.com]

Maybe I should sell all mine... :) I'd take $80 over Anita Blake books any day.

[amamelina.livejournal.com]

Sellings an option. Me, I'm just giving mine away. I have a guy friend who hasn't read past CS. So, as soon as I can unearth my books from the bowels of storage, I'm just going to give them to him (and vanish for a few years so he doesn't hunt me down for the horror I've unleashed).

[jeannette.livejournal.com]

They're all still in print.... I mean, granted, I have some of the old (read: not soft-core) book covers, but... but... they're never going to be collectibles! GO BUY THEM NEW FROM BORDERS FOR $6.99 A POP.

[brightlyiburn.livejournal.com]

This is easy, actually. It can all be summed up in 3 little words:

People are lazy.

No, really. As someone who has both bought and sold books (and various other things) on eBay, that's what my research and experience tells me. It's -a little- cheaper than buying in the bookstore and people don't want to actually have to go to the bookstore, so they buy on eBay. Then they don't have to get off their lazy butts.

Please don't ask me why said people are insane enough to spend that much money on a set of books they haven't read (since often enough they haven't read all of them and occasionally not any of them). I don't get it either. I even see people pay more (with shipping) than they would in the store for a -used- book on eBay. It boggles the mind.

[vmisery.livejournal.com]

Keep in mind too, for some people it's a long drive to a bookstore, and with gas prices what they are, that bit of shipping and handling for a bulk order actually works out cheaper than $10-15 worth of gas for a round trip to a store that's big enough to carry all of them.

[brightlyiburn.livejournal.com]

True enough, sometimes.

Then again, there are times when I see people from the state I live in buying books that way, too. And when you live in the smallest state in the country, very few places are a long drive.

Or at least, not by the standards of most people. RIers tend to get cranky if they're going to have to be on the road for longer than 10 minutes.

[vmisery.livejournal.com]

I really can't argue with that. :P If we're travelling more than say, half an hour, we pack a lunch and make a day of it! I'm about half an hour's drive from Providence, and I seldom head up that way unless I have enough stuff to do to be there for a whole day. A drive to the bookstore for me is about a gallon of gas up and a gallon of gas back (driving a not really that economical minivan, call it 18-20 mpg as an average.)

So *we* don't really have much excuse, but someone in say, Ohio who lives 30 miles or more from a decent bookstore...those are the kinds of people I'm talking about. :)

[tsubaki-ny.livejournal.com]

Good lord. It takes me an hour subway ride to get anywhere at all.

[vmisery.livejournal.com]

It was kind of like that for me when I lived in Boston (though I don't think it was quite as bad as NYC must be). Public transit is usually gonna be slower timewise, if just because of all the damn stops, but at least it's cheaper!

[tsubaki-ny.livejournal.com]

LOL I never minded. I've been doing it my whole life, and it gives me time to read. Sometimes the only time I get. (Sad thing is, I'm pretty sure very little in this city is more than six miles away from me. Hmmm. during the '03 blackout it took me four hours to walk home.)

I was in DC for about seven years -- college and such -- and had employers who would APOLOGIZE to me that my commute was half and hour. It was so cute. It cemented my opinion of DC as a practice city. *misses DC*

But yeah -- any time I want to buy a book -- or go to work or see friends (who are mostly all in the same boat) or do much of anything at all -- I budget an hour, even if it takes less. But... I like buying books. I like searching and flipping through and wading through piles of readers sitting crosslegged on the floor between shelves, and the whole tactile thing. I discovered Morgan Llewellyn because a crazy girl pounced on me in a Barnes and Noble and pushed "The Forever King" into my hands.

They have coffee.

This is a problem, I think. I can't come out of one of those places without a stack of books in my hands. A stack of books feels RIGHT in my hands. At least four. At least.

I don't have this problem with Amazon.com. Or eBay. It doesn't take willpower to not eBay things, for me. I guess I'm opposite!!

[roguetailkinker.livejournal.com]

Not to mention that they love getting the whole set in one fell swoop. No worries about buying a stack of books then realizing you have to go back for one you missed.

And to be fair, some might have read the books before- borrowed them from the library or friends, perhaps. *shrug*

[deire.livejournal.com]

No real insight except that my first editions might need a new home.

[pandorasblog]

If it turns out to be the same story on Ebay UK, I may get rid of the second half of the series. Had considered doing that pending a re-read anyway...

[zefire2.livejournal.com]

You said these are sets of 12-16 books going for 50- 80 dollars? Assuming these are sets of say AB if someone got say the first few from the library saw how good they were (and the first few were quite good) I could *easily* see them getting a set off Ebay. At $50 for 12 books they are paying a hair over $4 for each one, at $80 it is 6 and change. I *wish* I'd only spent that much on these at the bookstore. *Scans bookshelf spines* Looks like I spent about $84 (w/ tax) on my 10 AB books. Unless the shipping is steep the ebay-ers beat me. :)

Also sometimes it can get hard to find older books at a bookstore, stock in used bookstores can be terribly agonizingly sporadic, and the library can be sparse on bad-porn.