Who sells books for a penny?

The book market is a mess and the second hand book market is even weirder. As a buyer the second hand books on Amazon are amazing as many hardcover, good condition books are listed at a penny $0.01 of course the shipping is added to this but at $4 a book this is still a sweet deal. After buying the 5 volume History of Private Life and having it shipped to my house for a total of $20 dollars I tried to figure out how it was even possible.



The massive set consisted on Volume I: From Pagan Rome to ByzantiumVolume II: Revelations of the Medieval WorldVolume III: Passions of the RenaissanceVolume IV: From the Fires of Revolution to the Great WarVolume V: Riddles of Identity in Modern Times. Its authors are respected historians and the weight alone makes this an impressive purchase.

Naturally it made no sense and I was at a loss to how it worked. Finally, after Googling, I came across this thread. Its from 2012 but it throws some light on how the whole thing works.

In brief:
A seller lists a book for $.01
Amazon collects $3.99 from the buyer and gives $2.66 ($.01 + $2.64 shipping allowance) to the seller. (The $1.35 ‘closing fee’ is subtracted from the shipping allowance by Amazon)
The seller is a ProMerchant, so doesn’t pay the $.99 fee (but does pay $40 per month to be a ProMerchant).
The 15% fee on 1 cent is zero.
The seller pays $2.38 or $2.88 in postage for a 1 or 2 pound package (or less, if it is very light weight and can go First Class. Much less if the penny seller is high volume and uses Bulk Mail).
The seller cost for the book is zero, because he got it for free somehow.
The seller used recycled packing materials, so those cost nothing, too.
The seller ends-up with $.27 (if it’s 1 pound media mail) in a domestic shipment (a bit more if it’s mailed using Bulk Mail).
The seller is happy with his “profit”.
Amazon ends up with $1.35 from the shipping.
Amazon is even happier than the seller.

Its not exactly big bucks but it does explain a little more how 1penny books can be sold at a (sort of) profit.


Ethics of overpopulation

Martin over at Aardvarchaeology has written a post on the ethics of overpopulation that has generated a flood of comments. He begins by stating that there are too many people on earth and presents three suggestions:

  1. It is unethical for anyone to produce more than two children. (Adoption of orphans, on the other hand, is highly commendable.)
  2. It is unethical to limit the availability of contraceptives, abortion, surgical sterilisation and adoption.
  3. It is unethical to use public money to support infertility treatments. Let those unfortunate enough to need such treatment pay their own way or adopt. And let’s put the money into subsidising contraceptives, abortion, surgical sterilisation and adoption instead.

If we ignore the fact that ethics is a notoriously vague term I agree with all of his suggestions. I would like to go a bit further to than this. Considering the position of the earth today and the nonsensical religious pro-life arguments and based on the understanding that children are not a right, I would prefer to propose the following restatement of suggestions 2:

  • Limiting the availability of contraceptives, abortion, surgical sterilisation and adoption should be criminalized.

I fail to see why the concept of religion should be used as a valid argument for limiting contraception which can prevent the spread of disease, cause personal and financial hardship in addition to increasing a world population.

But I also find it bizarre that individuals can motivate spending (and/or demanding public funding) vast amounts of money for infertility treatments while there are children in need of love and care in the world. What is their problem? Sure, “natural” may be nice but if you cannot then please focus on the needs of children not on the egoistic desire to reproduce your DNA.