Is a book worth £500?

When looking to buy a copy of Newton’s Telecom Dictionary I noticed that as well as the standard page on Amazon, there was another page on which the price was set rather higher, along with a more convoluted title.  The first time I saw this second page there were in fact three booksellers, all with very high prices:

[table th=”0″]
Sam Books, £432.98
Greenpastures UK, £598.97
UK BOOKDEPOT, £599.00
[/table]

Why would these sellers set such a high price for a book that is readily available?   Are they hoping that someone may not be able to find the cheaper version, and mistakenly pay £600? Continue reading “Is a book worth £500?”

Is it good business sense to reduce your customer base?

The following graph would appear to be bad news.  This shows the reach of timesonline.co.uk – that is, the proportion of daily Internet users who visit the site.  For the first half of 2011, around 0.07% of Internet users visited the site each day; while that seems small, it’s a small proportion of a very large number.  Then, in late 2011, the number of users dropped significantly, and (other than a brief temporary increase in early 2013) the site now has a userbase around a quarter of its old level. Continue reading “Is it good business sense to reduce your customer base?”