Have you ever noticed that sometimes when you go back to your "cart" on Amazon.com after browsing and selecting books, a book you previously had added and maybe forgot about for whatever reason had changed in price.

I have noticed this on several occasions. In a recent article in the LA Times, a staff writer writes about his experience in having the obscure books he added to his cart raise in price from one visit to the next.

I had always wondered about this phenomenon. I understood the concept of knocking the price down as in putting the product on sale. But Amazon.com raising the price of a book? That didn't make any sense to me. Books in bookstores are never raised in price, only lowered occasionally.

Does Amazon.com look at its books as wallstreet stocks (which is a reverse of how the word "stock" came to be used and understood, as in the actually stock of a company in its storeroom) that go up in price as scarcity and demand dictate?

I have a feeling that is part of the answer. The author of the article, David Streitfeld, writes about how a book called "Gonzo" about Hunter S. Thomson increased in price $75.00 on Amazon.com. That is quite a jump.

It seems evident that as Amazon's stock of this book decreased, they raised the price in an attempt to capitalize on the scarcity and possible demand of the product. This seems to be the case especially since, as Streitfeld reports, the publisher of the book claims that none of that additional $75 is going to him.

Interesting. Maybe we are better off shopping for books on land, not online. But Amazon.com is so darn convenient. If it's a 35 cent change in price on a book, I guess I can deal with it, even though it seems absurd that a huge company like Amazon.com needs to steamroll me for an extra 35 cents for its bottom line.

But $75.00? Forget it.