The Harry Potter Machine

So Deathly Hollows is available to preorder and has already hit number one for Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I have no idea how Amazon does it - but if you follow that link you will see that they are selling the 'regular' edition for $18.89 and list is $34.99. The deluxe edition that lists at $65.00 is up for preorder at $39.00 which is (if you don't feel like doing simple math right now) only 5 dollars over the list price for the regular one.

volume bayyyybeeee!

[nizo]

I am sure when you order a bazillion copies, you get some kind of discount. Plus hell they may even be selling it at very little profit, knowing that if even 1 person in 10 who buys it buys something else, they make money. Then again these are just my WAGs (wild ass guesses) :-D

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[Mantorp]

Or maybe they jack up shipping and handling to $100 per order a la eBay jerks.

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[stoolpigeon]

the book qualifies for free shipping -- the only time i ever pay shipping on amazon is when i buy something from a third party and it doesn't qualify for the free deal. and when i've used the free shipping option -- i've always gotten what i ordered as quickly as i would have paying for standard shipping.

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[TopShelf]

Being in the book industry, I'd add that for mega-titles like this, Amazon can go direct to the publisher for a massive quantity of books, cutting out the wholesale distribution layer needed for less popular titles.

Plus, from a warehousing perspective, these books offer other cost savings. Since the publisher will only ship the books to Amazon shortly before the street date (July 21), they can basically put all the pallets in a given area, so that when it comes to processing the orders, all those books are