Friday, October 10, 2008

The New York Times Says
"Without You" In High Demand
Columnist Mick Sussman of the New York Times wrote an article for the newspaper's September 8, 2008 Sunday edition in which he lists several books that are going for high prices on the Internet:

"A recent search on Amazon, sorting by year, genre and price, turned up 99 biographies with paperback editions published in 2000 selling for over $100, including “Seth Green” ($201.88 and up), Elina and Leah Furman’s “unauthorized biography” of the actor who played Dr. Evil’s son in the “Austin Powers” movies, and “Without You” ($290 and up, with a CD), Dan Matovina’s group portrait of the Welsh power-pop band Badfinger."
Sussman credits these high prices not only because of availability or for some collector's showcase, but because of what these books contain; first-source and jam-packed information on subjects where alternatives are otherwise difficult or impossible to find.

"The new strategy involves a selective embrace of e-commerce, focused mainly on a category of book that scarcely existed before the Internet — books you might call “rare but not collectible.” These are books sought after not as artifacts or for resale value, but for their content — often concerning subjects with appeal to fervent communities of interest."
To read the entire article (back issues and archives) you may need to subscribe to the NY Times online.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

"group portrait of the Welsh power-pop band Badfinger."

I find Group portrait to be a little verbose and of course they weren't Welsh!!!

ßill said...

Well, the article isn't about "Without You" specifically. It's about many books of the same category. But hey, a book just getting a mention by The New York Times is like a Catholic being mentioned by the Pope; there are hundreds of millions of them but few are noticed.

Anonymous said...

You complained previously about a columnist reporting wrong information. I would have thought the above quote falls into the same category. WRONG!!

ßill said...

If you can't see the glaring differences between these two articles - one a Badfinger hatchet job propelled by Joey, and one a simple overview of book niches - then you aren't very bright.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for being your usual arrogant self and calling ME not very bright. The boot is on the other foot quite frankly. What part about WRONG don't you understand? You know I'm actually right so you tear into Joey (as usual). That 'book niche' sounds like a typical Matovina quote (Gee I wonder if I'm right?).

Anonymous said...

Yep, this just further validates how good the book is and I contend once again, I've yet to see a credible retort to the facts in the book. The old guestbooks were a sham and Mike Gibbins gave up his due to sabotaging by a Molland friend. I complained bitterly at the time and lost interest for awhile. It's almost comical how when "anonymous" and "anonymous" and "anonymous" make what they think are harsh points they just further validate the book. And that's what the book is, quotes from those who were there, not Mr. Matovina's point of view. Why it's a classic, as time is proving out.

ßill said...

"Yep, this just further validates how good the book is and I contend once again, I've yet to see a credible retort to the facts in the book. The old guestbooks were a sham and Mike Gibbins gave up his due to sabotaging by a Molland friend. I complained bitterly at the time and lost interest for awhile."

To be honest, I've always felt responsible for Mike shutting down his board.

I've always been a critic of Joey's "Day After Day: Live" CD and his lack of compensation to other Badfinger parties, and I've complained about this often. So I was challenged one day (possibly by Randy, I can't remember) to make a parallel between that CD and Mike's "DBA Badfinger" CD and what compensation was given out from that. So I accepted the challenge and posed this question to Mike on his board, and the next day his board went down. I don't know for certain if my question is what caused it or not, but the timing was certainly suspicious.


"It's almost comical how when "anonymous" and "anonymous" and "anonymous" make what they think are harsh points they just further validate the book. And that's what the book is, quotes from those who were there, not Mr. Matovina's point of view. Why it's a classic, as time is proving out."

I believe these people post as "anonymous" to maintain a moving target. There's no accountability and no train of thought; just sniper potshots from the gallery. It would be very simple for someone to establish himself as "X" and continue an argument. As you can see from the types of criticisms being made it's obvious why they don't.

Anonymous said...

Does anybody kow how many copies the book sold, is it possible for you to find out from Dan Matovina? I just thought that normally book that became worth a lot of money in a short space of time are usually rare.
If the book didn't sell many copies I could understand this or it could have been similar to what happened to the Beatles in the sixties and somebody held a book burning somewhere.

ßill said...

Does anybody kow how many copies the book sold, is it possible for you to find out from Dan Matovina?"

I'll send him an email.

"I just thought that normally book that became worth a lot of money in a short space of time are usually rare."

Yeah, it's called "supply and demand." The demand outreached the supply.

"If the book didn't sell many copies I could understand this..."

Uh, no. That would mean there isn't enough demand and there should be ample copies available for meager prices.

"... or it could have been similar to what happened to the Beatles in the sixties and somebody held a book burning somewhere."

Perhaps in the Mollands' fireplace, but I doubt that alone would account for the shortage.

ßill said...

from a rejected "anonymous" submission:

"...he told me..."

Has anyone noticed that not a single comment has ever been posted here where an "anonymous" poster claimed Joey or Kathie told them something? You know why? Because it lacks credibility. I've had at least a half-dozen (probably more) "anonymous" claims submitted where the Mollands purportedly said something damaging about themselves. They were not posted. The same applies to Tom's widow. The same applies to Matovina. It's a waste of time submitting these.

Anonymous said...

Why don't these "anonymous" at least come up with a name? Any "anonymous" post completely kills credibility on the internet in my book. Though I guess it's worse to have multiple names as Randy J. did for his board. Couldn't he know hs IP address was showing on Mike's board? He had at least five identites going there. One "fake" would set up a premise. Another "fake" would agree. Then Randy would come in to pontificate off of it. One time he put words in Mike's mouth and got burned, but he blasted that away with a bunch of nonsense posts. So it must have been the same on his board. Never saw one positive thing said about Pete Ham or Tom Evans from him in five years. All the comments on them were coated in innuendo to make Joey and Kathie look superior, as if anyone cared.

ßill said...

Yes, I think a lot of people noticed Randy did that on his guestbook, but no one had the heart to tell him how obvious it was.

ßill said...

My last comment was ambiguous. What I was trying to say is that Randy apparently didn't realize that his guestbooks revealed the IP addresses of the posters. Randy posted from two pc's and those IP addresses showed up all over the place under pseudonym posts. In fact, one of his IPs was so unique that the pc was identified when clicked on; it actually said "Randy's laptop."

Instead of pointing this out to him, I found it funnier just to read him talking to himself.