Price Elasticity of Demand...

Palgrave Macmillan wants to charge me not $9.99 or $7.99 but rather $14.82 for a Kindle edition of:

Juan Cole (2009), Engaging the Muslim World.

Compare to $17.79 for a hardcover.

Considering that I would then spend 3 hours reading it if I got it, and that my work-time is cost-accounted out at at least $50 an hour, I would be making a $150 + $15 = $165 investment in reading the book.

Very curious that I find myself unwilling to do so--but I would already have done it (and I would right now be paging through it and not be writing this post) if it were $9.99 and so $160 in total cost.

Am I rational? It seems that Amazon has managed to establish $9.99 as a default price point, and anything more than that brings very different parts of the brain than my normal surf-click-bing! into play...