is that once you’ve used it, you usually don’t want to use it again,

is that once you’ve used it, you usually don’t want to use it again (e.g.,
once you’ve read the book or seen the movie, you don’t want to do it a
second time). Yet the benefits are the same for the next person who
uses it (e.g., the next person who reads the book or sees the movie). For
digital intellectual property (e.g., CDs and games), the experience is
just as high quality for the second user as the first. Half.com provides a
mechanism that enables anyone to sell such goods at low fixed prices
in an efficient and smoothly operating national and international market.
Books
Think of Half.com as a used bookstore online, one that offers hundreds
of thousands of titles.
Buying Books
Here’s what I bought on my first try (see Table 27.1). I’ve been meaning
to buy and read these books for a while.
The savings provided me with an incentive to buy. My savings were
$42.82, that is, 64 percent off list. A shipping and handling charge of
$6.85 was added to my order. Keep in mind, these are not impulse
purchases that I happened to see on a table as I walked to the checkout
counter of a bookstore and will never read. I actually read the first and
the third books and will read the second just as soon as I can break my
indentured servitude to my publisher.
Table 27.1 Books and Savings
Title Purchase
Price
List Price
Passage to Juneau: A Sea and Its Meaning (Raban) $6.37 $26.50
Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John
Adams (Ellis)
$6.47 $15.95
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New
York (Caro)
$10.79 $24.00