The curse of small press

[beholder]

Is it me or does it seems like there are people out there, who pray on small press collectors? Specially Ligotti books?

I've seen books prices on ebay and specialized bookstores bumped from $50-$60 to hundreds within a short period of time. I understand people wanting to make a profit, but sometimes it just looks ridiculous and extremely greedy.

I just decided to pick a few Ligotti books and was surprised by their prices. A hardback copy of Conspiracy against the Human Race on Bookfinder.com starts at $800 to over a thousand

I've seen a book on ebay, that's been siting there for months, and the seller constantly changes the price from $100 (50% sale from $200) to $70 (30% sale from $100) to some other random combination of price/discount. Looks like bait trying to lure a misinformed buyer.

Seems like the norm is to buy the book, wait until it's sold out and bump it to 3 times the original price and beyond.

I'll just wait for Ligotti's pengin paperback.
(apologies for my broken english)

[njhorror]

This is a topic that comes up from time to time. Usually, it's "what the market will bear." Occasionally, but rarely anymore, when a big name talent does a small limited edition run of new material the publisher will "leak" the news to friends and steady customers and the edition will be "sold out" pre-publication. I've seen it work both ways. I once bought a book that originally sold for $50 for about $300 because I felt it was a minor milestone in modern horror, and the author was a rising star. The selling price rose over the months with very fine copies fetching $800. I held on to it, because I really admired the book and didn't want to part with it. When the economy fell apart I had to sell the book for $100-$150, I forgot because we were having a very rough time of it. My point is that you're probably better off getting the Penguin for a fraction of the cost.

[Sam]

I also think at least some of those ridiculously high prices for used books on Amazon, Abebooks etc. are basically random. I saw a book on Amazon a while back listed at $2,400. It was a hard book to find but not THAT hard. (Can't recall which book now, sorry.) I emailed the seller, and he apologized and changed the price to something like $80, saying it was an automatic listing generated by some program he used.

That said, there are definitely a lot of very overpriced books out there. There was a very nice Ligotti collection on eBay recently starting at $1,300; you could pick up all of the books separately for about $800. Hurray for Penguin!

[beholder]

I've been on the same boat once, where I had to sell some books (which were bought overpriced) for half of what I paid.

I do appreciate and buy Tartarus, Sarob and Ash Tree books when I can, but when they run out and become pricey, I just look for a paperback or a beat up used copy.

I almost bout 2 copies of "Summonings" because of how expensive "The white road" goes on the second hand market, but then I would become what I hate, so I changed my mind

Yeah, I've seen those insanely over expensive books on abebooks. The automatic listing makes sense now, because I once saw a print on demand selling for over a thousand.

Yeah! I've seen that Ligotti lot for $1,300. That's discouraging.

[Frater_Tsalal]

Man, it's even worse with small presses that specialize in occult books. You think that Ligotti limited runs can be pricey? Go onto eBay and do a book search for "Andrew Chumbley" and you'll see what I mean.

All I can say is, glad I got my HC copy of TCATHRC when I did!