Some interesting findings re: using Amazon UK.

Have you been wondering where all the ‘Warehouse Bargain’ books have gone? I had mused on the possibility that POD printer Lightning Source now had a new printing plant, and so there were no ‘slightly damaged’ POD returns to be had at nice prices. But… I now discover that only by searching in the new Amazon Resale category will you find (for instance, currently) a £15 copy of Lovecraft’s Letters to Family and Family Friends, Volume 2: 1926-⁠1936, sold and shipped by Amazon in ‘acceptable’ condition. Presumably a warehouse return, after a picky purchaser noticed a slight bump or a greasy mark left by a printing-machine? And even then you have to skim through several pages of shovelware drek to find this item. (And if there are no results then it will silently present you with the normal search-results, which is annoying).

This £15 bargain doesn’t show up in the book’s regular page, even in the lower ‘New & Used’ tab. Nor does it show up in your regular ‘sorted by low to high’ search-results.

Another trick is searching Amazon Resale with one word…

HOVSCO Electric will find nothing.

HOVSCO alone will find a heavily discounted HOVSCO Electric bicycle.

But yes, obviously the old ‘Warehouse Bargains’ are there if you know where to look. They can even be shipped to your local Amazon locker. Good to know, though… I guess that by telling readers about this I may lose out on some bargains myself. Oh well, enjoy your slightly-bumped bargains.

Note also that I find that Amazon has started hiding pages-that-exist from search results. For instance, I have Travel and Communication in Tolkien’s Worlds (1996, and reissued in 2020) on my Wish-List, added a year ago. But this no longer shows in search results — not even when using the simplest form of Travel Communication Tolkien as search keywords. Yet the page for it still exists. Amazon is thus no longer comprehensive, and this problem obvious seriously diminishes Amazon’s use as a bibliographic starting-resource for scholars. The problem will also likely push second-hand book-sellers to eBay instead, when they can’t find the page to list their item on.