It's going to me!
Yep, that's right. Venture Capitalists are handing out huge sums of cash to startups, and it's working its way directly into my pocket.
A couple of days ago, I heard that allbooks4less was making a starting offer of two free books for their first 25,000 orders, so I got a biography of Thomas Paine and a book on DirectDraw, paying $4.90 for P&H. My wife then ordered a couple of hardcover mysteries for $4.90 P&H. The next day, my wife got a coupon from Amazon for $10 off any non-book item. She bought a copy of Scrabble for our fine game collection, paying $4.50 for P&H. A month ago, I got a copy of the out-of-print Telefon book 25 cents via Amazon auctions and a coupon.
It's interesting. In the past, investor capital went into things like R&D and advertising. Nowadays, companies are just handing that money directly to consumers. I was amazed when I heard that PriceLine was using cash-reserves to make up for price-differences between buyer and seller bids, but I then started noticing that it's really happening everywhere.
While I don't mind getting good products for loss-leader prices, I wonder how long this trend can continue.
Oh well. Until then, I'm gonna grab as much as I can. Christmas is coming :)
