Why does Amazon have more books from the 1880s than the 1980s? Blame copyright

Re:Why does Amazon have more books from the 1880s than the 1... by WalterBright on Wednesday July 31, 2013 @02:47PM (#6135978)

I have several thousand books from the 80's and 90's. Very few are available. Consider one example:

"Mastering The MFC for Windows 95 using Symantec C++" by Richard Parker published by Thomson Computer Press.

It's long out of print, and I wished to make it available to my customers. I contacted the author, he was all for it, but said he didn't have the rights, I'd have to contact the publisher.

The publisher is out of business. I could find nothing on who owned the rights. Dead ends everywhere I looked.

So everybody loses. The author, the publisher, me, and my customers.

BTW, there is one used copy for sale on amazon for $14,763.21:

http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Mfc-Windows-Using-Symantec/d...

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Re:Why does Amazon have more books from the 1880s than the 1... by mongol on Wednesday July 31, 2013 @04:18PM (#6136559)

Is there any aspect of that book that motivates that price?

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Re:Why does Amazon have more books from the 1880s than the 1... by ijk on Wednesday July 31, 2013 @04:49PM (#6136741)

Obscure used books on Amazon tend to get automatically bid up to astronomical prices, as the repricing bots mistake the noise of an empty market for a signal: http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=358

As of this moment, the most expensive book on Amazon is going for one billion dollars: http://www.amazon.com/s?rh=n%3A283155&field-is-available-new...

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Re:Why does Amazon have more books from the 1880s than the 1... by anigbrowl on Wednesday July 31, 2013 @04:54PM (#6136768)

There's an insurance scam just waiting to happen here.

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Re:Why does Amazon have more books from the 1880s than the 1... by anigbrowl on Wednesday July 31, 2013 @04:48PM (#6136736)

No, it's just automated pricing based on it being rare. You set a high price, other pricing bots come in and undercut it - unless the book is sufficiently rare or obscure, in which case the high price remains.

Funnily enough, my book is a good example of this. There's three copies on Amazon, priced within 1 cent of each other: http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/1898275351/ref=dp_olp... It was one of the elss well-selling ones in the series so it's become 'rare' by virtue of its own obscurity, rather than inherent merit of its own :-)

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Re:Why does Amazon have more books from the 1880s than the 1... by JonnieCache on Thursday August 01, 2013 @07:12AM (#6139513)

Note to self: set up own pricing bot to bid rare books down to cheap rates and then snap them up. Finally that copy of the Dune Encyclopedia will be mine!

EDIT: Apparently it can be had for only £15 now. How depressing.

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Re:Why does Amazon have more books from the 1880s than the 1... by WalterBright on Wednesday August 07, 2013 @05:02PM (#6175611)

It's now up to $30,219.92 !!

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