The world of book publishing is a notoriously fraught business, with science and academic books suffering particularly badly in today’s marketplace. Where once books were sold primarily in specialist stores operated by sole traders, the emergence of the major book chains (whose retail philosophies emphasize bulk wholesale procurement) and the growth of market share accounted for by supermarkets (who now sell around one-in-five books in the UK and US) have fundamentally changed the dynamics of book production and distribution. Nowadays, marketing incentives encourage books with mass appeal to general audiences, such as celebrity biographies, TV show tie-ins, or good old-fashioned bodice-rippers. By comparison, books on (say) fundamental physics appear more obscure than ever.
In fact, the stereotype of the bookworm, the person whose low social esteem is both intensified and characterized by an interest in (bleurgh!) books, may even be becoming extinct.
As such, the arrival of e-books has been both a blessing and a curse: a blessing because digital production is not limited by the costs of paper materials or distribution logistics, a curse because the removal of such practical barriers has indirectly removed many of the organic quality control mechanisms that had evolved in the industry over centuries. Nowadays, when scanning the offerings on Amazon’s Kindle Store for example, it can simply be impossible to distinguish the genuine masterpieces from the dross. Hence the growing importance of online customer reviews, not least those embedded within the bookseller’s platform itself.
And through this resource, I have encountered the following exciting bargain: a science book available on Kindle that has received near-universally rave reviews but which has recently been massively discounted in price. In fact it is probably the biggest discount on a book price that I have ever seen in my life. And exactly how much is this startling reduction? Well, you might not believe it. You might not even want to believe it. For it’s a whopping $467! Let me say that again: the discount on the cover price of this single-volume 600-page book is A WHOPPING $467! Continue reading →
Like this:
One blogger likes this post.
