When publishers come out with a new title, they send free copies to media types to encourage them to write up the new product. The media types often just go and sell the books instead. A bookstore around the corner from my office, Second Story Books, buys them and resells them; often you can get brand new hardcover books for less than it would cost you to buy the paperback a year later.

I just stopped in there and bought a copy of Charlie Wilson’s War, a book about the congressman who was one of the prime movers behind CIA support of the Afghan mujahedeen in the 80’s. When the cashier tallied the damages, it came to $9.11.

C’est ironic, non?