But this may not have come through in my piece today in Bloomberg View about Book Pricing and all the crazy prices, some of them quite low, charged for my new book, The Surprising Design of Market Economies.

What got cut out of the piece, for space reasons, was where I said that what book stores are selling is the taste and judgement of their staff. When you walk in a book store, you are paying for someone to select and put before your eyes good books that are worth considering. In the age of the Internet, that’s actually more valuable, because one can become lost in a sea of books. And if that book stores gives you a pleasant, well-lit environment, with maybe a cafe to have a cup of coffee, all the better. It makes paying more for the actual physical book worth it.

Buying and Selling always happens at a price, but who decides? That’s at the heart of the disputes between publishers and retailers in the book world, as well as the amazing unpredictability of pricing. I talk about it here in my latest piece for Bloomberg View.