Sundog Publishing, LLC

If you follow the news at all, you’re probably aware that the U.S. Postal Service has been facing serious fiscal challenges and that some in Congress have even advocated privatizing it.   Complicating the story is the allegation that the fiscal crisis is not the fault of the USPS at all but rather the product of punitive policies imposed on the agency by Congress.

We don’t intend to get into policies or politics here, but we’d like to make two important points:

• It is currently much cheaper to mail books via the USPS than to send them via any other service.
• It is also much less trouble for a small business like ours, with less-than-daily shipments,  to prepare books for mailing than it would be to use UPS or FedEx. Continue Reading…

Sundog Publishing has recently switched hosting services and has also taken the opportunity to rebuild the website from the ground up using WordPress.  We are also working to establish a real shopping cart-style ordering method. The transition is taking time, and in the meantime some things (like the shopping cart system) remain unuseable.  Please see the note at the top of the home page for interim ordering instructions!  And thanks for your patience!

Whatever you think of the “magic of the free market”, there are a few situations in which it indisputably breaks down (or would break down) if left entirely to its own devices. Mail delivery to Gnome, Alaska. Medical care for indigents. College textbook prices.

When it comes to both the availability and the pricing of a product, the Law of Supply and Demand works best (from the customer’s perspective) when (a) those creating the demand are also the ones paying the price, (b) when the demand is elastic — that is, when an unreasonable increase in price leads to a sharp drop in demand and thus in the supplier’s profits, and (c) the profit potential is sufficient to motivate a supplier to provide, or continue providing, an essential product or service even when the market is small. Continue Reading…