Life In 19x19

Does anyone know why Go books are going for such outrageous prices on Amazon? "Reducing Territorial Frameworks" is going for $300 new and $40 used.
"Opening Theory Made Easy" is $74 used.
"Invincible, The Games of Shusaku" is $300 new.
"Get Strong at" books are anywhere from $50 to $170.

Am I missing something? I feel like I'm missing something.

It basically means "the books are not available, but if you are stupid enough to buy one nevertheless, you have to pay whichever unreasonable price is being asked for". It is the same with scarce CDs or any other old books on Amazon. There are those funny collector item sellers for a bargain for EUR 1001.14. They are hoping for your clicko.

RobertJasiek wrote:It basically means "the books are not available, but if you are stupid enough to buy one nevertheless, you have to pay whichever unreasonable price is being asked for". It is the same with scarce CDs or any other old books on Amazon. There are those funny collector item sellers for a bargain for EUR 1001.14. They are hoping for your clicko.

But all of those books are still in print from Kiseido...

Obviously it's a more honte move to buy a Kiseido book which is in print directly from Kiseido especially during periods when they are on sale.

tchan001 wrote:Obviously it's a more honte move to buy a Kiseido book which is in print directly from Kiseido especially during periods when they are on sale.

Oh I do buy them direct from Kiseido, I was just confused as to why a book that is 18 dollars on Kiseido could wind up being 300 dollars on Amazon. I was just bored on Amazon searching for things haha.

Because it's very hard to buy those books wholesale in the States. Yutopian has the exclusive license to distribute those books in the North America and they use it to lock down the market in the (I believe mistaken) view that it will be more profitable for them.

That's one brick wall that we gave up bashing our heads against about a year ago.

gogameguru wrote:Because it's very hard to buy those books wholesale in the States. Yutopian has the exclusive license to distribute those books in the North America and they use it to lock down the market in the (I believe mistaken) view that it will be more profitable for them.

That's one brick wall that we gave up bashing our heads against about a year ago.

It wouldn't be so bad (for us buyers) if they had a proper onlineshop. I would order a bunch of things, but they won't let me (in a way without jumping through to many loops).

p2501 wrote:

gogameguru wrote:Because it's very hard to buy those books wholesale in the States. Yutopian has the exclusive license to distribute those books in the North America and they use it to lock down the market in the (I believe mistaken) view that it will be more profitable for them.

That's one brick wall that we gave up bashing our heads against about a year ago.

It wouldn't be so bad (for us buyers) if they had a proper onlineshop. I would order a bunch of things, but they won't let me (in a way without jumping through to many loops).

Yes, it's not a good situation for anyone. I tried to tell them that, but it ended badly. For awhile I kept thinking perhaps if I'd approached this or that differently... But in the end, it's almost impossible to change someone's mind once they've decided something.

You could try emailing them and telling them what you think about the situation. The worst thing that can happen is that they won't listen, which brings us back to the status quo.

From the GGG perspective, there's nothing more we can do, they've made that very clear. So eventually we'll just start releasing our own books on haengma, tesuji, middle game etc, because we eventually want a dependable supply of those sorts of books for beginners, libraries etc... The original plan was to work together with Kiseido on that

gogameguru wrote:releasing our own books on haengma, tesuji, middle game etc, because we eventually want a dependable supply of those sorts of books for beginners, libraries etc...

That is what market economy is all about, isn't it? I plan the same:) We need a dozen books on each topic rather than 0 or 1.

You can also find many chinese go books on amazon US site. Try typing in the ISBN. They will be overpriced even more than 18->300$. (For example, this kind of book "速成围棋下（初级篇）含光盘" ISBN 9787543637085 sell for about 3$ now become 80$ (before shipping).) Also, you may not get reply for over eight weeks, then items finally ship, then you receive 1 or 2-months later.

I feel bad for Yutopian. If I were an author there I think I would also be a bit sad about this. Lower distribution means less chance of royalties & messy website means the same thing.

Faro wrote:But all of those books are still in print from Kiseido...

Sure - it means that there is a somehow working market (or partly an oligopol) for NEW books outside Amazon and a rather non-existing market for USED books at Amazon.

I don't know if it this is the case here, but one phenomenon is that many books sold on Amazon are priced programmatically. A bot finds prices elsewhere on the web and makes a pricing decision based on what it sees. Where there are many prices available, this can produce good results. Other times, it does not.

The key point is that some companies can list books on Amazon without putting any real thought into it. So they have very small incentives to produce a reasonable price.

Faro wrote:Does anyone know why Go books are going for such outrageous prices on Amazon? "Reducing Territorial Frameworks" is going for $300 new and $40 used.
"Opening Theory Made Easy" is $74 used.
"Invincible, The Games of Shusaku" is $300 new.
"Get Strong at" books are anywhere from $50 to $170.

Am I missing something? I feel like I'm missing something.

It's been that way on Amazon for quite a while. I always hope that no budding Go player or well meaning gift buyer would ever fall into any of those pricing traps!

OTOH, at those prices I could eventually decide to liquidate my library and purchase a new Subaru

Tengen wrote:

Faro wrote:Does anyone know why Go books are going for such outrageous prices on Amazon? "Reducing Territorial Frameworks" is going for $300 new and $40 used.
"Opening Theory Made Easy" is $74 used.
"Invincible, The Games of Shusaku" is $300 new.
"Get Strong at" books are anywhere from $50 to $170.

Am I missing something? I feel like I'm missing something.

It's been that way on Amazon for quite a while. I always hope that no budding Go player or well meaning gift buyer would ever fall into any of those pricing traps!

OTOH, at those prices I could eventually decide to liquidate my library and purchase a new Subaru

I have some Go books and a bridge to sell you.

hyperpape wrote:I don't know if it this is the case here, but one phenomenon is that many books sold on Amazon are priced programmatically. A bot finds prices elsewhere on the web and makes a pricing decision based on what it sees. Where there are many prices available, this can produce good results. Other times, it does not.

The key point is that some companies can list books on Amazon without putting any real thought into it. So they have very small incentives to produce a reasonable price.

I've been selling books online for about 15 years and in a brick and mortar store since paper was invented. Hyperpape is right.

The use of computers has allowed the morons and the illiterates to function in the bookselling business. They know nothing about books other than part numbers. They might as well be selling plumbing parts.

EDIT: It is actually worse that Hyperpape describes. Many of the bots check prices only on Amazon. This works on popular books that sell several copies per day with dozens or hundreds of separate sellers holding copies, but for obscure books that sell a couple of copies per year, it doesn't.