Make money, money, honestly if you can; if not, by any means at all, make money.
Quintus Horatius Flaccus [Horace] 65BC – 8BC
When I finished writing the second edition of “Organizing Creativity”, I was glad to retire the first one. It was verbose. It’s only two redeeming features were that it laid the groundwork for the much improved second version and that it contained a lot of quotes. As I made the PDF available, there are still a few editions floating around. I try to remove them/get them removed whenever possible. I also sold a few versions of the print copies, and these are in circulation as used books. Personally, I would be glad if I could retire the first edition completely.
However, there are some ‘businessmen’, who apparently try to make money with it. Much money. Otherwise, I have no explanation for the following offer at Amazon:
I mean, seriously, what the heck? The original price was about $20. This reminds me of the Dilbert comic where the company hopes for the one dumb rich guy to pay a million extra for their product.
I thought about putting the first edition back into business — for the lowest possible price. Simply to underbid these ‘traders’. But there is another way to underbid them — by making the first edition available again as PDF (about 4MB). Note that I do not recommend this version, the second edition is much, much better. 🙂
It’s very interesting what happens when you create something, put it up for sale, and watch what happens. I would not have expected someone to try and make this kind of money with my work — in a unethical way in my opinion.
Strange times …
Update: I have just written a customer review:
Second Edition is much better (and cheaper)
I wrote this book a couple of years ago. It’s interesting to see what happens to one’s own works, and how they are used — or looking at the price in the marketplace here — misused in my opinion.
Anyway, I would strongly suggest looking for the second edition — it’s also available on Amazon and much, much better (and also extremely cheaper).
I hope potential buyers read it … seriously, how can you demand $757.40 (+ $3.99 shipping) for a book that costs originally only about $20 and claim “Brand New! Huge seller with millions of transactions! Satisfaction Guaranteed!”? Cognitive Dissonance? Brrrrrr … I feel … tainted. :-/
