Pricing and availability

I was wondering what to put on sale for February, so I started looking over what might be of interest to our customers. One of the things I do is visit some of our competitors to see what they have as a price—after all, it would be embarrassing to put something on sale and have the sale price be higher than their regular price :(

So, I was thinking about running a sale on the new BHQ fascicles (Biblia Hebraica Quinta, a replacement for the standard Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia). The newest volume is Deuteronomy, on which that nasty river in Brazil is beating us by about a dollar. But, it is interesting that when you look at the older volumes, General Introduction and Megilloth and Ezra-Nehemiah, they have them at list price.

So, what's going on here? Simple, run the newer stuff at a bit cheaper than your competition, lose a bit of money, but convince people that you are the cheapest. Then, jack up the price on the older and less in demand titles to make up the difference. That is business 101. Wal-mart has used it for years, as have the grocery chains; we call them "loss leaders."

So, out of curiosity, I looked up a few other titles:
Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon Old Testament: Study Edition, 2 Volume Set, the standard Hebrew Lexicon:
Eisenbrauns: $151.20
Amazon: $154.98
But, check this out: CBD doesn't even carry it! They carry The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon with an appendix containing the Biblical Aramaic (cheaper, but that is because Hendrickson and CBD are the same company...), A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (more expensive), and Reader's Hebrew-English Lexicon of the Old Testament (a bit cheaper), but they don't carry the standard Hebrew lexicon.

Tuebinger Bibelatlas / Tuebingen Bible Atlas
Eisenbrauns: $120.00
Amazon: $150.00
CBD: nothing. Just in case they might have had the ISBN wrong, I did a search on "tubinger" and got a whole bunch of jewelry! Hmmm...

The Context of Scripture:
Eisenbrauns: $169.15
Amazon: $172.00
CBD: Nothing! Am I noticing a pattern here?

Don't get me wrong, I have spent thousands of dollars over the years at CBD (I started buying from them in 1979), and they are a customer of Eisenbrauns, but I have noticed a trend away from academic/scholarly stuff over the last several years. I suspect they took a look at the demographics of their customers and decided to concentrate their energy where they make the most; makes sense to me—that's why Eisenbrauns doesn't sell non-academic titles :)

So, where is this whole thing going? I feel sort of like Garrison Keillor with a stream of consciousness kind of thing going on.

I don't know what I'm trying to say! I guess that is why it is an idle musing :)

By the way, I still don't know what to put on sale for February! Any ideas? I need to have it up by Monday's BookNews.