Amazon Takes the Cake

Years ago online used booksellers like bibliofind.com pooled the listings of lots of bookstores and helped buyers get used books at low prices with small shipping and handling costs. Only a couple of years ago it seems Amazon bought one or more of these online booksellers and/or offered space to advertise and sell items with a higher fee. For example, the other day I ordered from Amazon a three dollar book and paid an additional $3.49 to ship it to my door. Notice anything odd about this? The handling fee is greater at Amazon than the price of the item. I'm glad to have the book, but there's no question that earlier handling fees are gone forever. Let it be said that many of these centralized used-book listing services still operate at fees closer to the old ones. Go ahead and check out Amazon if you want to know about the market, but then check folks like Alibris.com who may give you a better break, with lower used book prices, a greater variety of editions, and lower handling fees. The bargains are still out there, and certainly not all are at Amazon.

Waiting for Reality to Catch Up

Currently (see dateline) the President is telling the country in his State of the Union 2006 address just what he thinks is important for us to do, or how he plans to lead us into the rest of the 21st century. The blurbs on the news feeds came out an hour or more ago with major points of his address on the State of the Union. In effect he spoke before he spoke by releasing the text of his speech ahead of his speech. Not to be outdone, and simultaneously with the President, the "official" Democrat point of view was posted to the news feeds and it appeared a couple of hours before the POV would show up in real time. Which do you like best? Real time, or "Internet" time? Which mode is out of sync with our needs?