fo diggity

Anonymous asked: Tom, surely retailers pricing variants so high can't be ethical?

brevoortformspring:

Ethical doesn’t really enter into it. It’s a question of what the market can bear. If they can get the price they’re asking for, then there is no problem. And if they can’t, then they wind up with a stack of unsold variants that aren’t bringing in any revenue—and then they either discount them down to try to turn them, or they stubbornly hold out for that one person for whom that particular variant is worth the price they’re asking.

This is how the free market system works

Also, to get that variant they have to over order. So that 1/100 variant book has to sell at a price that justifies however many unsold copes of the other 100 sit on the shelf and eventually get sold for a loss (or binned for space). That’s what you’re paying for with that variant. Not the cover art itself.