Recently I started reading books. I was browsing online looking to buy a book when I came across 2 different shops. One was selling a book (I won’t name it) cheap then the other, more expensive (but still the same book). I wondered, are they the same and is the cheaper one “fake” or are there such thing as “fake” books?
There used to be warnings on books that if it was missing its cover it wasn’t a copy intended for sale.
When I was in college there was a book fair that sold misprints and books with other minor cosmetic issues.
Neither are necessarily fake but different than the retail copies you’d get at B&N.
Worked at a chain bookstore in the late 90s, so I spent a lot of time ripping the covers off of paperbacks for return. It was painful for a book lover.
Ouch
I ordered a book from an Amazon reseller - quite a large company - at a very cheap price, and the front cover was cut in half with a part missing. Perfect condition otherwise.
Now I could have sent it back, but it only cost £1 plus postage, so being the resourceful ex-teacher/crafty person that I am, I re-covered it in high quality card.
I now have a good reading copy of Plato
Just listened today to a podcast interviewing an indie author. His book is distributed partially through a non-Amazon printer, and the price has been the same for its entire release. Even so, he has noticed that occasionally Amazon will revert to some seller with a ludicrous price, even though the book is still available for well under half of the new purchase price. Could be a shady reseller that you’re running into. Don’t know if this is what you’re running into, but it reminded me of it.
Man, I’ve been trying to find a genuine copy of ‘The Nine Gates of the Kingdom
I’ve read something about this happening not just with books but with products in general. Basically, Amazon will push the lowest price option in an effort to drive sales through them (Amazon).
A lot of independent booksellers on Amazon are drop-ship bots. They will automatically create listings for books based on the cost of buying the book from another seller and re-shipping. Occasionally, two of those bots will find each other and start pricing a book based on each other which results in the price spiralling to crazy levels.
It’s just different prices by different sellers.
This is like that movie Blast From The Past where Brendan Fraser comes out of the bunker and doesn’t know how things work.
Man, I’ve been trying to find a genuine copy of ‘The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows’ for ages now.
Book piracy is a real thing in many countries. It’s certainly plausible that some of these might make their way to Amazon.
I’ve seen some cases where people sell summaries or adapted versions of popular books, often at lower prices. While these aren’t necessarily “fake” books, they can be misleading, so it’s always best to check the author, publisher, and reviews before purchasing.
There are a lot of reasons why two copies of the same book would go for different prices
Are both version of the book new? If not, is the quality about the same? Maybe one shop has more copies of that book than the other. Perhaps due to who shops there, each store has different focuses on the types of books they offer.
It’s also possible that one is just over pricing, or the other is giving you a good deal
Yes, sometimes there are bootlegs. They are even on Amazon.
About half of the more obscure books I try to check out through kindle unlimited these days are cgpt4 generated random nonsense with the right cover.
Usually they come in the form of autobiographies
Does anyone remember the fake Harry Potter books that kept getting put out?
Yep. Chris Broad had someone steak the cover of his unreleased book and make an amazon listing. The contents of the book was filled with a guide on breastfeeding.
Did you check if it is a paperback vs hardcover or different editions of the same book? Or used vs new?
This happens with textbooks sometimes where people sell books intended for one market (usually India) in another market, for example EU. They will be way cheaper and of far worse quality but I guess they are still not fake. Only sold illegally.
(In the US) I came across computer science and electrical engineering books that were sold at a much lower price as they were printed for the Indian market. Paper and binding were slightly worse than the US version, but not enough to justify a price 80%/90% lower.