So in my quest to see what the Drs. Heller are up to these days, I went to Amazon and found The 7-Day Low-Carb Rescue and Recovery Plan.

When I decided that $24 was a bit steep for a two-year old book that is really for the reference library, I checked out their resellers’ prices and found out I could buy a copy for just one cent!

What’s up with that?

How can anyone make money this way? Are these loss-leaders? Or buys that help someone build their ratings so that they can sell other higher-priced goods more easily?

I checked, and it looks like Amazon fixes the price that is charged for shipping, so it can’t really be that they making lots of dough on that. But maybe it’s worth it to make $2 on a book that can be shipped third-class and still get there in three weeks (standard shipping allows for 4 to 14 business days for delivery).

I’ve had good luck buying through Amazon’s resellers so will probably go ahead and buy me a one-cent (or $3.50) copy.

Update, 3/13: So I got the book today. It’s a brand new copy. The postage was $1.74. It occurred to me that book sellers must pay Amazon a percentage of whatever they sell the book for, so selling at a penny means that they don’t have to pay as much. And I guess if you do a volume business, it adds up. See this post for more on the book.