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[jfb]

Further motivated, I've just put almost all my computer books up for sale on Amazon and Half.com. If you're curious, here's the Half list. I can't find a way to get the Amazon list, although maybe it'll be here eventually. Anyway, it's mostly around the cluster of Java, web stuff, and programming languages, plus some textbooks and the TeXbook.

About a third of the books didn't seem likely to earn enough to be worth selling, which means they're going free to someone. They're mostly dated, but if you want to get a basic understanding of these subjects (as of a few years ago when I stopped buying computer books), leave a comment and I'll tell you what I've got: Human-computer interface design, Painter 5, DirectX, hacker jargon, Dylan, Scheme, C++, XSLT, XML, Palm programming, and many Java topics. Otherwise they'll go to the Friends of Some Public Library.

At this moment I can recognize an Addison-Wesley book from its ISBN number. I hope that doesn't last.

I was surprised to discover I own a $100 (or more) paperback: Ted Nelson's Computer Lib/Dream Machines. I bought it for $13.95 at the Stanford bookstore ten years ago. Predictably, I have not put this one up for sale, while I "decide what to do with it", i.e., dither.

Comments

[localcharacter.livejournal.com]

How did you decide which to put on Half and which on Amazon? (I expect to be confronting the same choice in the fall.)

I know my brother used to have the Nelson book. I wonder if he still does? Come to think of it, I wonder if I've got a copy around here somewhere?

[jfb.livejournal.com]

Price. My primary goal is getting rid of stuff, so I mostly adopted an "undercut the lowest price" strategy. And then I picked whichever site had the highest lowest price, on the theory that people are too lazy to check both.

Eventually it became clear that Half was always winning that race, so I stopped checking Amazon except when I had a book whose low price on Half really surprised me.

And also just some randomness.