One of the problems with Amazon is that it sometimes shows up your beloved copy of a book to be worth pennies. I particularly remember finding several signed copies of one interesting US book on 1970s sexuality on offer for 1p. I had thought mine was reasonably rare…

And other times, it's delightful. I occasionally browse for books I have to see what the second-hand copies are being offered for. On finding people wanted silly money for the GoD book (Richard Sharp's 30 year old The Game of Diplomacy) I put my copy up for grabs for silly money. Well, it was originally published for the then outrageous price of £7.50 – about £50 today – even if I think I paid around 50p for it a few years ago.

And someone's just bought it, probably because my copy is in much better condition than the cheaper of the two left.

The funny thing (to me, anyway) is that the entire contents of the book are available online.