Ordered a carton of The Portal from my publisher last Saturday. Lightning Source (the POD vendor) shipped the books on Wednesday. They arrived on Friday. Now they’re clogging up my kid’s empty bedroom while he’s off in the snowy Middle East.
There are now six vendors (besides Amazon) offering it for sale on the Amazon site. They’re all undercutting Amazon’s price of $14.10, but they all charge $3.99 for shipping/handling; you get free shipping from Amazon if you’re a Prime member. One vendor is offering a used copy, in good condition, for $999.11. I wrote the book, and even I think that’s a bit excessive.
If you want one of mine, let me know.
Richard Bowker 
I’d like one, Richard. What is the cost and where should I send the payment? Would it be possible to have you sign it? I’ll be giving it to my grandson. He’s too young for it yet, but I’ll put it up and give it to him when he’s older. I have an email link on my “About” page on my blog. If you would, please send me the ordering details.
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Your book hasn’t yet topped out at $23 million. That would be cool. It happened to one author. Interesting article on robot price adjustments apparently gone mad:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/04/25/amazon.price.algorithm/
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This is hilarious. I haven’t been paying enough attention to these algorithms for print books. A hardcover of Senator is going for $2,475.70. I love the seventy cents tacked on at the end. This is probably worth its own post!
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How big is a carton and how much of my room is it taking up?. Some friends came over for dinner last night and as they were expecting to be out of power in the near future I gave them Senator and Dover Beach to read. Although now I’m wondering whether I just let them walk away with $1,000 paperbacks.
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The carton isn’t that big. You and the carton can share the room when you come home.
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