If you look at the other sales on Abebooks they are often signed, same with Amazon. So what happens is, the first person who made that post saw a signed 90+ year old first edition, and posted it for like 1000 dollars. It doesn’t really matter what it’s actually worth, this is a common strategy in online posting to extract as much profit. So then the next people coming to upload see the original posting of like 1000, they see that it’s crazy overpriced so they might lower it 100 or 200, but even then it’s still 800. This goes on and 30 postings later the price is still high at 200 because it started high. If there’s not enough volume then it will likely stay high, as is likely the case with this book which is exceedingly rare.

Socialist books in general outside of bourgeois translations of Marx and Engels are incredibly rare in the west and censorship of anything potentially pro-soviet during the cold war was a very real thing

Because they know AI companies want to buy it

1st edition

And it’s 95 years old.

It’s free

I couldn’t justify paying so much for a book. I would also be afraid of damaging it. I haven’t read a physical book in over a decade.

I want physical copies of Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power and Socialism with Chinese Characteristics: A Guide for Foreigners, but despite being new prints both are well over 100 USD…

There are times when it is genuinely cheaper to bind a book yourself

I’m a little suspicious. Why does she call it Russia when she means the USSR?

It’s because it’s a D’ni Book that links you to the Soviet Age.