Posted by Woll on September 25, 2014 at 21:44:58 user Woll.
In Reply to: Silly Prices posted by Roger Wardale on September 25, 2014 at 12:29:23:
I'm not sure which sites you are looking at, but I think that, at least some of, the 'strange' book prices are being automatically created by some program/system that sets the price relative to other prices, or depending on the perceived rarity, or even 'randomly high'.
The presumed aim of which, is to maximise the profit from selling the books (by selling to someone who doesn't check the 'real' price!). The bookseller presumably has experience that this strategy sometimes results in them getting the higher price, so they continue to do it. They may even create 2 entries for each book they have - one at the normal price and one at a higher price.
I suspect most prices for the smaller booksellers are set by hand, but some of the larger sellers have computer programmes that choose the price based on a number of factors. An inadvertent consequence of this approach has resulted in the situation where the price of a book sold by 2 sellers got higher and higher, day by day, as shown in this report:
Amazon $23,698,655.93 book about flies
So take a look again - you may find that your books are now worth millions!