Buying Nanotech Pioneers

My book, The Nanotech Pioneers: Where are they taking us? is published by Wiley VCH, which is a quality publisher of research-type books. They don’t do much in the way of active marketing, but you have to admire their distribution systems. By way of the web, I have found copies available all over the world--Malaysia, Hong Kong, Japan, Spain etc.

Wiley gives its authors a 25% discount of the list price on their own books, which is not all that generous when you can consider that I can buy it cheaper retail at Barnes and Noble. A friend of mine is trying to buy a bulk lot of 50 to distribute at a conference that he organizes (this is a GREAT IDEA that I want to promote; Nanotech Pioneers makes a wonderful doorprize for nanotech conferences, or you can do business card drawings at your company booth. It is a lot cheaper than say, an iPOD Nano.). It turns out that my friend can get a bulk price from B & N at $19 a copy vs a list price of $35. Wiley won’t sell it to him any cheaper. Anybody that wants to buy it one copy at a time, the cheapest I have found is through abebooks, which includes booksellers from all over the world. Cheapest is $22.00 from A1 Books of Netcong, NJ. Surprisingly, Amazon.com is among the most expensive places to buy Nanotech Pioneers, selling it at list, or $35. I have seen it listed for over $60.00 in some places, and briefly, for over $200 before it was widely available. Bookselling turns out to be a stranger business than I would have believed.