Book Bot's Price for Libby Book Irks Some

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov. 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- A stack of "The Apprentice" by Lewis "Scooter" Libby sat on the shelves of the Lorem Ipsum bookstore for more than two years, with only one selling for $2.88 during the period. Then, Libby's indictment came, and now the same books are in high demand with a relatively low supply, causing their prices to skyrocket to over $900 on online book distributors like Amazon.com.

However, along with the newfound sales the Lorem Ipsum bookstore is also experiencing an unexpected spike in "Apprentice Price Hate Mail", as web surfers lament at the high prices for the books.

"The angry e-mails came as quite a surprise. The letters should really be directed to our book pricing bot," explains Lorem Ipsum founder, Matt Mankins. "We just ship the books -- the book bot sets the price. While we were reading about the news, the software robot noticed a spike in the Amazon Rank for the book, indicating that there was a sharp increase in sales and thus demand. The bot is armed with an algorithm whose goal is to optimize profit, so of course it raised the price of our book. We regret that some people feel that the prices are too high, but it's just economics."

Even though the Lorem Ipsum pricing bot is good, Mankins prefers eBay as a venue to sell the rare first edition signed copy of "The Apprentice" that Lorem Ipsum has in its collection.

Lorem Ipsum was started in 2003 as both a bookstore and book-focused research laboratory, dubbed "Lorem Labs." The bookstore, located in Cambridge's Inman Square, recently won the Boston Phoenix's 2005 Award for "Best place to help a bookstore save the world." Lorem Labs, which produces the book bot, is nearing completion of a public release of its bookstore management software, aimed at helping to update the infrastructure of the industry. Other projects of Lorem Labs include a book sales sonification device, a store geocache, RFID-based inventory tracking, and a series of retail experience enhancement games to drive repeat traffic.