OT: R.A. Lafferty estate sale

Gwern Branwen · 07 Mar 2011, 21:48 · from 2011-March.txt.gz

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From: gwern0 at gmail.com (Gwern Branwen)
Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2011 16:48:01 -0500
Subject: (urth) OT: R.A. Lafferty estate sale
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	<AANLkTikVHbrj9CBV=M+ig9ryBOScLR6pEA62HhayJGWF at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <AANLkTiny31mFNKdjqM2hgJxAkPfX5n+sHv0OF4KWDRUz at mail.gmail.com>

On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 3:46 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com> wrote:
> Actually, what's really disgusting is that the high bid is $70K. 23
> novels, for ghod's sake.

Yeah, that is very high an asking fee for novels that never sold very
much. ($70k invested over the remaining ~70 years of the Lafferty
copyrights is *a lot* of money; I can't see how the Lafferty
copyrights could possibly compete. Some quick figuring with the net
present value approximations says that at 70k, to be a good
investment, the royalties/revenue would have to average like $4000 a
year every year.)

Presumably the target audience is Lafferty fans, or those seeking
status & prestige (kind of like how Encyclopedia Britannica or the New
York Times stay afloat).

-- 
gwern
http://www.gwern.net

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