“Bones Buried in the Dirt” Gets It’s First Third Party Seller On Amazon

I’m trying to decide whether to be happy or not upon the discovery that Bones Buried in the Dirt has its first third party seller on Amazon. This isn’t a seller I worked to place the book at, so it means that someone who bought a copy (or someone who I sent a review copy, or even one of the Goodreads giveaway winners) must have sold their copy. That’s cool and all, as long as she/he/it read the book first, but there’s something else that puzzles me.

The seller is someone called Open Books out of Illinois. It purports to be a non-profit that uses proceeds to support literacy, which is definitely cool. More importantly, they are selling the book for $9.01 plus $3.99 shipping. To do the math, that’s a used copy for $13.00 of a book that retails new for $12.99.

Oh, I know that the price for new copies doesn’t include sales tax or shipping (though you also have to consider that Open Books will probably use media mail for the $3.99 shipping). However, you can always buy the book on Amazon and get free shipping with Prime or just get super saver shipping if you buy something else that costs at least $12.01. Whether or not they charge you sales tax right now depends on where you live.

Also, you could also buy the book at Tattered Cover in Denver or The Bookworm in Omaha in person (Tattered Cover you can also order online, but I don’t know what shipping is because I always just walk over there) and just have to pay $12.99 plus applicable sales tax for a new copy.

As such, $13.00 for a used copy just doesn’t seem like that great of a deal. I realize with taxes and/or shipping for a new copy you might save a couple of cents by going for this used one. However, that just doesn’t seem like much. I guess I just don’t understand how some of the used sellers do their pricing.