Quote:
Originally Posted by rlauzon
Which has better value?
A) Pay $20, use it, throw it away.
B) Pay $20, use it, get some money for it.
If you walked into a store and they offered you 2 options:
1) Pay $20, get an eBook that you can read once and then throw away.
2) Pay $20, get a pBook that you read once, but if you bring it back, they will give you $10 store credit for it.
Which option would most people choose?
The answer is obviously 2.
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Okay, here's a direct answer to your question: the mathematics of the deal are not the only factor to every person.
In a pure mathematic evaluation, you're absolutely correct.
However, when non-mathematic factors get tossed in there, others may (and some clearly do, as all these counter-examples indicate) find that those other factors are more important to them than the money side of things.
Convenience has a value too, or have you never paid a premium to get a candy bar and a soda at the quickie mart?
Not having to store, or take back the book (as someone else mentioned) has a value. Those are both factors you're leaving out.
Then there's the "I just don't care about the money I'd get back from selling them" factor.
You're tossing around a 50% return rate, that's a wee bit disingenuously optimistic -- I recently sold 5 whole
boxes (big ones too) of books, mostly hardbacks (around 80 or so, at a guess), and got back ... (wait for it) ... thirty whole dollars. (I like to think of it as $30 worth of empty shelf space
)
Was that worth my time and effort in sorting them out and carrying them up there? That's for me to decide for myself, and my decision might well be different than yours because I'm coming from a different set of circumstances. I think that for me, I'll probably just donate the next batch to a library, because the minor amount of money isn't worth it, and giving them to a library will do more good, in my thinking, than selling them to the used book store.
Again, it's not that we think that what you're saying is wrong, nor that we don't get it, it's just that different people weight different factors differently.
And that's
okay.
We don't all have to agree or think the same about the same things, in fact it'd get pretty boring if we did.
