Parents beware- Watch out for children’s books! First Laura Ingles Wilder’s memoires of life on the prairies of Minnesota and Wisconsin were warping young minds with an inaccurate portrayal of a free and self-reliant frontier. Now the linguistically entertaining word-strings penned by Ted Geisel are riddled with caustic racism.
Today’s price on Amazon for a copy of On Beyond Zebra is $650. What accounts for the 38 fold price increase? (Barnes and Noble still has the ‘out of stock’ hardcover listed at 16.99.) Cutting off supply seems like the traditional way to look at it. Stopping the presses from printing such offensive material indicates a future scarcity. This isn’t the first book to become dated so as to be dismissed by the publishers. Most of these tomes are simply forgotten, found for a few dollars on a table at a church sale.
In this case, the books are being withdrawn them from the market by those who hold their copyrights. On Beyond Zebra, however, is a relatively unknown Dr. Suess book. There are other discontinued books for sale by famous authors. Zane Grey’s The Vanishing America can be had for $3.79. Cass Timberlaine by Sinclair Lewis is posted at $5.39. And Pebble in the Sky by Isaac Asimov is $3 even. (So much to read–so little time)
The extra $633 dollars is the result of a social or community change. The premium for this copy, on this day in March, is a social component arrived at through the market pricing system we know as Amazon.
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