From lojbab@lojban.org Fri Oct 19 09:01:58 2007 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list llg-members); Fri, 19 Oct 2007 09:01:58 -0700 (PDT) Received: from eastrmmtao105.cox.net ([68.230.240.47]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.67) (envelope-from ) id 1IiuIH-0001rc-Ux for llg-members@lojban.org; Fri, 19 Oct 2007 09:01:52 -0700 Received: from eastrmimpo01.cox.net ([68.1.16.119]) by eastrmmtao105.cox.net (InterMail vM.7.08.02.01 201-2186-121-102-20070209) with ESMTP id <20071019160142.SJNO24782.eastrmmtao105.cox.net@eastrmimpo01.cox.net> for ; Fri, 19 Oct 2007 12:01:42 -0400 Received: from [127.0.0.1] ([72.192.234.183]) by eastrmimpo01.cox.net with bizsmtp id 2G1f1Y0093y5FKc0000000; Fri, 19 Oct 2007 12:01:41 -0400 Message-ID: <4718D542.4070103@lojban.org> Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 12:03:14 -0400 From: Robert LeChevalier User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.7 (Windows/20050923) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: llg-members@lojban.org Subject: [llg-members] New Business - used CLL book sales Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Score: 0.0 X-Spam-Score-Int: 0 X-Spam-Bar: / X-archive-position: 455 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: llg-members-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: llg-members-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: lojbab@lojban.org Precedence: bulk Reply-to: llg-members@lojban.org X-list: llg-members Since the member meeting is in progress, I will take this to the members rather than the Board. I just got a phone call from someone wishing to order the book. For some reason he had gone to amazon.com rather than the LLG website. Here is what he found: http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0966028309/ref=pd_bbs_sr_olp_1/104-3475652-9005546?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1192808070&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Lojban-Language-John-Cowan/dp/0966028309/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-3475652-9005546?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1192808274&sr=8-1 Someone is clearly taking advantage of our non-presence on the amazon.com marketplace, and potential Lojbanists are being ripped off if anyone actually buys these. These aren't even autographed, as far as I can tell. I am not sure what we should do about it. We could advertise ourselves on this same marketplace, with orders coming to me, but we know that my record in prompt shipping has not been something to brag about, and amazon does keep track of seller reputation. Someone who is a bit more efficient (two of the sellers explicitly offer to ship within a day or two) could take a box of books and offer them for sale on amazon (at a premium to cover the cost of sending a box of books to an intermediary - we used to sell books on amazon for $48) - we can do this officially as an LLG policy, or someone who wants to be Lojbanically entrepreneurial can but a box of books and do it themselves, at the risk of competition from others if they set the price too high. (In case anyone cares, a box of books is usually either 16 or 20 copies). One person in the past did buy a box of books for resale, Colin Fine in England, and for a while we passed to him any orders in the UK as an authorized distributor, but I don't know whether he ever sold all his copies. Nowadays, about half of our copies go to non-US customers. In any event, resuming a presence on amazon would probably increase our book sales - we were probably getting 10-15 orders per year from amazon when we were listed there, which was probably more than half of our total sales. lojbab