I’ve been waiting for quite some time for Drive by James Sallis to come to the Swiss iBookstore. From time to time, I run a check for items on my wish list. A few days ago, I was surprised to see that Drive is now available. In fact, it now has two listings.

One of the listings is priced at 6.00 Swiss Francs and the other at 6.50. What’s going on here?

I examined both items. Both have 192 pages and are published by Oldcastle Books. The 6.00 Franc version was published on May 26, 2011,

and the 6.50 Franc version was published on April 26, 2012.

I downloaded samples of both to see if I could find any significant differences.

Here are the cover and copyright pages of the first one,

Here are the cover and copyright pages of the second one.

The only difference I can find aside from the different cover picture is a short bio of James Sallis in the more recent version, along with a list of his work and a few pages of “blurbs.”

I guess someone thinks that’s worth 50 centimes.

I’m still surprised that Apple is so sloppy about this. What is the point of having two virtually identical books in an eBook store with different prices?

Previously here:
Drive Is Pure Emotion