> If I offered you a BMW M5 for $2000, would your first thought be, "hmm, I should check to see if someone is selling the same car for $1800"?
Firstly, probably yes. If you're selling way below the market price, there's something wrong with your BMW. But leaving that aside...BMW M5s are not nearly not as easy to produce or copy as books. I could probably generate a (horrible) learn to program in C book in a matter of days and put it up for sale for $30. I would appreciate someone telling the world "Don't buy this, it's a bad idea."
Now I maybe you have already read the book and know it's not particularly bad, or you think Zed's reputation as an author is good, or something else like that – and it's fine to offer those as rationales for buying the book. But the argument that "Any book about C is likely to change your career* and you're quibbling over $30?" is a terrible argument IMO. The likely thing that happens with the average C book is that you read the first 10 pages, can't grasp some point that the author is particularly bad at explaining, and wander off to watch a Youtube video or something.
Now if your book is so engaging that it prevents this sort of attention wandering, that is a book where you can reliably present this argument. One example (from my perspective) are the Feynman Lectures on Physics. I can read them for ages and ages without getting bored. If you or anyone else in the thread knows about that kind of C book, let me know. K&R (surprisingly) is the closest I've come.
You are saying the value to the buyer is far, for more than the cover price.
I agree completely; it's a really important point.
But not everyone on HN is a professional programmer, and there are students, self-improvers, and individuals in other countries for whom the sentiment of "just buy it; it's sufficiently valuable to you" is tempered by the opportunity cost (yes; the opportunity cost of $10) and the need to get the best value/dollar.
This is probably why poverty is so self-sustaining: because you have to burn ridiculous effort over trivial nonsense. Your thin budget gets even thinner, and now you're stuck.
Thinking more clearly, no. You're right, I would just take the $2000.
But...as I pointed out in my previous argument, a book is not comparable to a BMW, acquiring a new skill is. "$30 is cheap for acquiring a new skill" depends upon the premise that the $30 has some potential towards acquiring the new skill (which would depend upon some evaluation of the author and the book contents). Otherwise it's just an "I have $30" iPhone app.
Actually I think I could put it this way better – if I tried to sell you a $2000 lottery ticket with a BMW as a prize, wouldn't you at least enquire around and see if you could get one cheaper?
>Complaints about book prices are silly. Take your career more seriously.
Not everyone is a professional developer in an advanced economy, I am neither. Some books I've bought, have costed me as high as 25% of my monthly income. Also I am not talking about Tanenbaum hardbacks, I have never bought a book that expensive.
Programming book preferences are fine, useful even! Complaints about book prices are silly. Take your career more seriously.
I guess my point is just: pretty much all technical books are fantastically, comically underpriced.