Harry's Spare book, now half price at Waterstones.

[username8888]

£14 and not even released yet. Probably six pre book sales. 🤣

@ItsRainingCatsAndDogsAgain It's half price. I said it was half price. I'm admitting it's half price. My 'reason' it was half price was just a joke. It couldn't possibly have been only 6 sales. Happy?

Loads of books like these are half price right now, even pre-order ones that aren’t even released, I guess as part of run up to Christmas many people buy them as gifts… OP doesn’t do much book shopping I guess?

Yep, it's all kindle downloads now 😀. I'm saving the planet by not chopping down trees to create works of fiction..or ghost written autobiographies

You’ve embarrassed yourself OP, please give up.

Meanwhile, in the real world, there is serious concern about what has just happened in Poland...

What? Oprah has been at this since the 80s.

And no, Michelle Obama does not represent all black American women.

It's baffling on here that nobody ever seems to say "oh I didn't realise that's why, you learn something new every day" etc when they're wrong. Instead they double down or pretend they were joking when they clearly weren't. It's bizarre.

OP you must be so embarrassed at starting this thread. Were you hoping for a bunfight about Harry and Meghan? Bless.

I'm glad people see right through OP and what they're trying to do here.

It's been "half price" all over for several weeks now.

It's a marketing ploy but I'm surprised to see a thread about it now when it's such very old news.

Aren’t a lot of books at reduced prices at Christmas? For presents & such.

Its being released in January so not a christmas book. Probably half price because we will all be skint in January 😂

You're very confident, for someone so wrong! 🤣🤣

Oh well it was free on Friday if you grabbed the Amazon offer! I think still not worth the effort though, not even worth the +1 star of clicking into it. They will be happy to lose money on the book, the real money will be on the rights, serialisation etc. and I for one will not be contributing one penny into funding their lifestyle.

Good for you then.

It’s a marketing tactic called loss leader. Stores heavily discount popular items to get costumers into the shop to buy other items. The Harry Potter books were all heavily discounted on release.

It’s a marketing tactic called loss leader. Stores heavily discount popular items to get costumers into the shop to buy other items

But these are internet pre-orders, not in-person purchases although obviously there's nothing to say the high street shops won't be promoting it as a loss leader when they get their copies in the hope of securing impulse purchases.

I suspect most who are interested will have pre-ordered at the reduced price while everyone else waits for the daily digest of juicy bits from whichever rag has bought the serialisation rights.

It's going to sell extremely well. Personally, couldn't care less - not a fan of RF and deeply uninterested. But even I can see that anyone who does care will want to read about RF in first person, from a member of the RF.

I think it'll be a,massive best seller. But loss leader? If people are buying the book online so not actually going into the shop, isn't it like Tesco Express selling Magnums in the summer at 10p an ice cream outside on the pavement? If it doesn't actually get you in the shop, what's the point?

A free audio book will get some people into the "shop". Amazon's goal in offering it for free was to get people to sign up for Audible. When they do, they auto pay monthly for credits to use on other audio books.

So Amazon deliberately lost money on this book in order to make money elsewhere.

It is literally the definition of loss leader.

What's Amazon got to do with Waterstones? Do they own it or something?

Sorry, for some reason I thought we were discussing it being free through Audible.

Carry on and ignore me. I will try to pay more attention. 😳

Amazon's goal in offering it for free was to get people to sign up for Audible

It is literally the definition of loss leader.

The offer of a free audio book is a long standing one and many others are included in the deal. It's not exclusive to 'Spare'.

I expect there will be some sign ups and there's no doubt Amazon will have done their number crunching in including it but I would think most people who want audio books will already be subscribing which will exclude them from the offer and many who have pre-ordered will prefer a physical copy.

It's unlikely to be a barnstormer of a loss leader.

I work in publishing. This is normal, especially for hardbacks.

I just cannot believe the vitriol on here for these people. Yes, they're annoying, but if you dislike them so much just don't think about them? The gleeful sourness is just so... sad