Saturday, October 03, 2015

JASON X novel - Pricing Gone Insane!


That right there is the cover of the novelization of one of my favorite entries of the Friday the 13th film series. When JASON X came out in 2001 I was thrilled and loved every second of it. The film is actually partially responsible for my attitude toward the slasher genre changing from disdain to outright love. JASON X shows so much joy in the tropes of the genre and is buoyed by so much smart humor about audience expectations that I find it impossible to not grin from opening logo to end credits. It is so much fun! 

Years after the film came out I discovered that a series of novels had been written branching off from this odd F13 effort and decided to pick them up. Hoo boy! That has not been easy. To date I have only stumbled across two of them in local used bookstores and my patience seems to have landed me in one of those sad dead zones of the secondary book market. That is to say, I want a hard to find book and a lot of other people want the same book while the supply is very low. Or at least it appears to be low. I haven't been able to tell if there was a short print run on the series or if this is just a standard case of price manipulation by sellers. At least I haven't been able to tell until now. 

This morning I was looking over my Amazon Wish List to spot new price drops when I noticed an odd price hike. Namely I noticed that the lowest price for a copy of the Jason X novelization was $2,703.23!! What the fuck?!?! That is completely insane. I know this kind of thing happens in the secondary market because sellers who don't want to pay attention to their listings use computer programs to monitor other seller's prices and then automatically make an upward adjustment. This is how the various sellers end up with upward spiralling prices on books that that are never going to sell for these ridiculous amounts and it occurs all the time - not just on books, of course. But this made me laugh out loud today and I thought I'd share. If you doubt me click on the Amazon link below. Madness! 


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