Milking the classics
If you were the head of a university press, notoriously known as they are for slim profit margins and small batch printing, and you learned that one of your out-of-print books has increased in value by more than 280%, would you consider reprinting it? What if you then learned that another university press has preempted your move by releasing a new and improved version of your product? Well, you'd be wise to become a used book seller.
Right now you can pick up a used copy of Hannan & Freeman's classic Organizational Ecology (1989) through Amazon for only $737.60! Not satified with just one copy? Order the second and only remaining copy for an additional $2,088.29!
Oh, and these are paperback editions. "Condition: Good."
So, does anyone out there have a copy of this that they'd care to sell? The bidding starts here (with a trivial commission for the host).
Update (9/6/06): You missed the cheap copy. The remaining copy is now up to $2,262.14. Aren't you just kicking yourself for not buying in earlier?
Labels: books, organizations, sociology
This entry was posted by Jeff, on
Tuesday, August 29, 2006.
You can leave your response.
August 29, 2006 8:48 PM
i'll keep my eyes out at the garage sales!
August 31, 2006 3:35 PM
I'd love to see a future orgtheory.net post that takes as it's focus the ways that pop ecology/org demographics has indeed improved and expanded between '89 and '04.
September 09, 2006 9:54 AM
why is this such a great book?
September 09, 2006 3:42 PM
It's not $2,000 great. But it is the first comprehensive statement of Population Ecology, one of a few theoretical perspectives that have dominated contemporary organizational studies research. Then again, it's been written elsewhere (as Brayden has said), and libraries are chock full of copies, so it's hard to imagine why it would reach such insane heights in the market.