I received a bit of happy news today. The Canadian publisher has agreed to send me an advance copy of Haruki Murakami’s newly translated, IQ84. It will be released in North America near the end of October. The title is a play on words, the q and nine being pronounced the same way in Japanese. The book is a tribute to Orwell’s famous dystopian novel, and it got me to thinking, I’ve never read Anthony Burgess’ variation on the same theme, so I thought I might pick up a copy. Here’s what I found:

That’s right, a new copy is available for the low, low price of half a mil.

My bad, it’s “almost like new”. But look, 98% of the previous millionaire book-buyers have been satisfied.

There’s an explanation for this, and here it is. Presumably the algorithm jdmediabooks is using also happens to like nice, round numbers.