The curse of small press

Is it me or does it seems like there are people out there, who pray on small press collectors? Specially Ligotti books?

I've seen books prices on ebay and specialized bookstores bumped from $50-$60 to hundreds within a short period of time. I understand people wanting to make a profit, but sometimes it just looks ridiculous and extremely greedy.

I just decided to pick a few Ligotti books and was surprised by their prices. A hardback copy of Conspiracy against the Human Race on Bookfinder.com starts at $800 to over a thousand

I've seen a book on ebay, that's been siting there for months, and the seller constantly changes the price from $100 (50% sale from $200) to $70 (30% sale from $100) to some other random combination of price/discount. Looks like bait trying to lure a misinformed buyer.

Seems like the norm is to buy the book, wait until it's sold out and bump it to 3 times the original price and beyond.

I'll just wait for Ligotti's pengin paperback.
(apologies for my broken english)

This is a topic that comes up from time to time. Usually, it's "what the market will bear." Occasionally, but rarely anymore, when a big name talent does a small limited edition run of new material the publisher will "leak" the news to friends and steady customers and the edition will be "sold out" pre-publication. I've seen it work both ways. I once bought a book that originally sold for $50 for about $300 because I felt it was a minor milestone in modern horror, and the author was a rising star. The selling price rose over the months with very fine copies fetching $800. I held on to it, because I really admired the book and didn't want to part with it. When the economy fell apart I had to sell the book for $100-$150, I forgot because we were having a very rough time of it. My point is that you're probably better off getting the Penguin for a fraction of the cost.

I also think at least some of those ridiculously high prices for used books on Amazon, Abebooks etc. are basically random. I saw a book on Amazon a while back listed at $2,400. It was a hard book to find but not THAT hard. (Can't recall which book now, sorry.) I emailed the seller, and he apologized and changed the price to something like $80, saying it was an automatic listing generated by some program he used.

That said, there are definitely a lot of very overpriced books out there. There was a very nice Ligotti collection on eBay recently starting at $1,300; you could pick up all of the books separately for about $800. Hurray for Penguin!

I've been on the same boat once, where I had to sell some books (which were bought overpriced) for half of what I paid.

I do appreciate and buy Tartarus, Sarob and Ash Tree books when I can, but when they run out and become pricey, I just look for a paperback or a beat up used copy.

I almost bout 2 copies of "Summonings" because of how expensive "The white road" goes on the second hand market, but then I would become what I hate, so I changed my mind

Yeah, I've seen those insanely over expensive books on abebooks. The automatic listing makes sense now, because I once saw a print on demand selling for over a thousand.

Yeah! I've seen that Ligotti lot for $1,300. That's discouraging.

Man, it's even worse with small presses that specialize in occult books. You think that Ligotti limited runs can be pricey? Go onto eBay and do a book search for "Andrew Chumbley" and you'll see what I mean.

All I can say is, glad I got my HC copy of TCATHRC when I did!