Re: Slightly cheaper elephants?

["Prof. Peter Johnstone" <P.T.Johnstone@dpmms.cam.ac.uk>]

Vaughan's message prompts me to pass on the information, received
today, that the U.S. end of OUP has already sold out of copies of
(at least) the second volume of the "Elephant", due to higher than
expected sales. The U.K. end still has some copies, but they are just
about to reprint, six months before they expected to do so. What
implication (if any) this has for the availability of the book from
Amazon, I have no idea.

Peter Johnstone
--------------
On Wed, 12 Feb 2003, Vaughan Pratt wrote:

> Normally I click the "No thanks, just place my order" button at Amazon when
> asked whether I want to "Share the Love".  This feature lets you supply
> a list of friends ahead of time whom you can email after your purchase
> of a book with the happy news that you've secured them a 10% discount
> on that book.  I ignore this feature because it casts you in the role of
> Amazon salesperson and turns your friends into your clientele for as long
> as they remain on your euphemistically named "Amazon Friends list."  At 10%
> I find this role downright embarrassing.
>
> Now if I could get my friends 100% discounts, or maybe even 50%, I'd have
> to reconsider this.  I was just about to click the "No thanks" button on
> my preorder of Peter's "Sketches of an Elephant" when it occurred to me
> that a 10% discount on enough money to buy a house (ok a doll-house) was
> the monetary equivalent of a 50% or even 100% discount on a lesser tome.
>
> So this raises two questions.  First, are other sources of "Elephant" at
> 17% or better off Amazon's $295.00 price available to us eager students
> of toposophy?  (See below for why 17%, $245.50 to be precise, and not 10%.)
> And if not, is there anyone who'd been contemplating the purchase within
> the next week (Amazon's time limit) who'd like to be on my list, even if
> just temporarily for the sake of this one book, in order to be able to get
> it for the amazingly low price of $245.50?  (Oh, that's the one I would
> have chosen, sir, just sign right here, and here, and here.)
>
> OUP presumably does the best off this deal, with Amazon next and me third if
> I end up with at least two "friends."  (With only one "friend" the friend
> relationship may as well have been symmetric since each side gets 10% off,
> but that's still a 10% discount for each of two purchasers of the book.
> The only advantage of no "friends" is you get to keep all your real friends,
> but then no one gets a 10% discount that way.)
>
> One thing about this system that I find truly evil is that if 2n purchasers
> form n pairs in this way so that every purchaser winds up with a 10% discount
> on the book in question, this seemingly fairest of all arrangements turns
> out to be suboptimal for the purpose of extracting discounts from Amazon.
> The optimum is to elect a single salesperson, who buys the book at no
> discount, after which every purchase of that book within that week extracts
> 20% per book, half of which goes to the latest purchaser and the other half
> to the elected salesperson.  With enough "friends" the salesperson who
> took the original risk makes out like a bandit!
>
> I propose to reverse this as follows.  I'll buy my copy at $295.00.  Anyone
> wanting to be my "Amazon friend for a week" can then get it at $265.50.
> To spare me the embarrassment of becoming a salesman I'll send you an Amazon
> gift certificate for $20 which further gets your price down to $245.50.
> I still clear $9.50 (if I haven't lost a decimal point somewhere like those
> Anderson guys did), which means that if three people join this cockamamie
> scheme (my gamble I guess) then I end up with close to the discount I'd
> have gotten with only one friend, but my friends then become real friends
> because I'm offering them $49.50 (16.7%) discounts on a book from Amazon.
> Or two such if they buy two copies.
>
> So, if anyone who was planning to postpone their doll-house purchase in
> favour of buying two copies, or even just one copy, of Peter's book on huge
> arches (ele arch, phant huge), please let me know and I'll add your name to
> my list.  I will hold off on the actual purchase however until it is clear
> that everyone who wants to be in on this in anything like a reasonable time
> frame has joined, since the opportunity cost of splitting this arrangement
> into multiple weeks is $59.00 per split (proof by induction, with the base
> case being one purchaser, who gets no discount, whereas a second purchaser
> brings the total discount to $59.00).
>
> If you spot anything I've misinterpreted about Amazon's Share the Love scheme
> in the above, *please* let me know soon before this hole is dug too deep.
>
> Vaughan
>
>
>
>