order directly from Open Court

I’m a big Amazon customer, and like most other people I have gradually begun to use their site as a de facto global card catalog.

However, anyone planning to order any of my books is advised to do so directly from the publishers for the foreseeable future. There are reasons for my saying so.

If you want Prince of Networks, for instance, you can order it directly from the RE.PRESS WEBSITE.

But the real unfolding shocker is with my three Open Court books, which are often listed on Amazon at outrageous prices, leading many people (I receive email queries) to believe that they are unavailable at a normal price.

That’s not true. For instance, Heidegger Explained by no means costs $102 per copy as Amazon currently claims!

My understanding of the story is this… All of the books sold out. Open Court decided (as I would have too) that reprint via print-on-demand makes more sense than printing up a whole new massive inventory. This is 2009, after all. But apparently Amazon doesn’t list print-on-demand books that aren’t published through their own print-on-demand services. Hence, the third-party gougers are left to monopolize the listings on Amazon.

Sure, it’s flattering to go to Amazon and see someone think they can sell 7 copies of a short book like Heidegger Explained for $102 per copy. But I doubt anyone is foolish enough to pay that much for it, and besides that all you need to do is go to the Open Court website to order these books directly and quickly.

Here are the pages for all of them:

Tool-Being (yes, it’s grown a bit pricey over time)

Guerrilla Metaphysics

Heidegger Explained

All completely affordable, as you will see. And Open Court = good people, as well as one of the oldest philosophy publishers in the United States. They are over a century old, and have published a galaxy’s worth of stars over the years.

Occasionally, I still receive requests from strangers for free copies. I can’t do that anymore. With Tool-Being I still often agreed to do it, because I had bought so many copies of it myself as giveaways (first book, so exciting). But all of my complimentary copies of all of my books are long gone, and I’m not buying any more to give as gifts. That’s especially true of Prince of Networks, which is available free of charge from re.press in a PDF version.