The market price of the tickets is where supply meets demand, and clearly that's a good bit above 9 Pounds. The organisers mispriced the tickets and so it became a lottery for the huge numbers of people who wanted them at an artificially low price.

The touts, responding to this organisational deficiency, offer the certainty of a ticket, but at a market-clearing price. To those who want a ticket, they should be regarded as heroes. Instead they're lambasted by incompetent organisers and a press that seems ignorant of how free markets work.

The Edinburgh International Book Festival is the best in the world,why tarnish it with this rubbish.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

thanks# 3 I see even the dead are bored by EN reporting

In other news, a motorist was issued a parking ticket in the West End.

#1 You must be quite happy therefore to see increases in costs in everything from a loaf of bread to electricity, as it sounds as though you are in a fortunate position to accommodate such expense.

The book festival organizers had the very admirable idea of pricing the tickets reasonably, so that ANYONE can go and see an event and not just elitist @rsholes!

#7:

In case it has slipped your attention, bread and electricity are ESSENTIALS. Tickets to see Connery at a book festival are LUXURIES.

I (for once) agree with Fernando. Supply and demand is the thing here. If people were not willing to pay £100, they would not be selling tickets at £100. Pure and simple.

I really do fail to see what all the fuss is about. Whilst all this socialist idealism about low ticket prices is very commendable, how about those who only know at the last minute that they are going to be in Edinburgh at that time and want to see Connery? Should it really be an issue that someone who has a ticket, sells them one? Should there really be a big fuss about him charging well over the odds? Of course there shouldn't.

The price negotiation is between the buyer and the seller and is nothing whatsoever to do with anyone else. And that incidentally is what e-Bay is all about. People have BIDDED up to £100 for this ticket, so obviously £100 is what it is worth to them. If it was only worth £10 then the bidding would only have gone up to £10. Can the moaners and whingers really not work that one out for themselves?

#7:

In case it has slipped your attention, bread and electricity are ESSENTIALS. Tickets to see Connery at a book festival are LUXURIES.

I (for once) agree with Fernando. Supply and demand is the thing here. If people were not willing to pay £100, they would not be selling tickets at £100. Pure and simple.

I really do fail to see what all the fuss is about. Whilst all this socialist idealism about low ticket prices is very commendable, how about those who only know at the last minute that they are going to be in Edinburgh at that time and want to see Connery? Should it really be an issue that someone who has a ticket, sells them one? Should there really be a big fuss about him charging well over the odds? Of course there shouldn't.

The price negotiation is between the buyer and the seller and is nothing whatsoever to do with anyone else. And that incidentally is what e-Bay is all about. People have BIDDED up to £100 for this ticket, so obviously £100 is what it is worth to them. If it was only worth £10 then the bidding would only have gone up to £10. Can the moaners and whingers really not work that one out for themselves?

#7:

In case it has slipped your attention, bread and electricity are ESSENTIALS. Tickets to see Connery at a book festival are LUXURIES.

I (for once) agree with Fernando. Supply and demand is the thing here. If people were not willing to pay £100, they would not be selling tickets at £100. Pure and simple.

I really do fail to see what all the fuss is about. Whilst all this socialist idealism about low ticket prices is very commendable, how about those who only know at the last minute that they are going to be in Edinburgh at that time and want to see Connery? Should it really be an issue that someone who has a ticket, sells them one? Should there really be a big fuss about him charging well over the odds? Of course there shouldn't.

The price negotiation is between the buyer and the seller and is nothing whatsoever to do with anyone else. And that incidentally is what e-Bay is all about. People have BIDDED up to £100 for this ticket, so obviously £100 is what it is worth to them. If it was only worth £10 then the bidding would only have gone up to £10. Can the moaners and whingers really not work that one out for themselves?

Sorry. Server problem = 3 * mypost

Des Gruntled is disgruntled:

"The book festival organizers had the very admirable idea of pricing the tickets reasonably, so that ANYONE can go"

That's just it, *anyone* can't go because there is *finite* room.

How do we traditionally square that circle? By raising the price until enough people drop out that the number who want seats matches the number of seats available. If the organisers refuse to do that, the ticket touts will do it for them.

As for the rant about the cost of food and electricity, the same reasoning applies. It just so happens that an Indian guy and a Chinese guy are after the same loaf and barrel of oil that you are, so we have to have a bidding competition until two of you drop out. Result: price rises.

Don't blame me. I didn't make the world. I just happen to understand how it works.

If people are thick enought to buy these for £100 then other people will be clever enough to sell them. Would anyone here pay £100 to see Shir Sean talk about his book?

#6, you are just making that up. You can't get anywhere near the West End in a car because of the Tram works.

We live in a time where all we hear are complaints about the rising cost living, and here we find some of you complaining about something being too cheap – priceless…so to speak!

Who on earth would pay to hear this tax avoiding, exiled Scotsman spouting off about his life? Is there anything in the book about his alleged matrimonial misdemeanors? I doubt it.

The entrepenuers (I refuse to call them 'touts') are to be congratulated for identifying a market and acting to supply that market.
The event is, as Fuel Head correctly points out, a luxury where nobody is forced to pay the asking price.

The book fest mispriced the tickets (hence the whole selling out in an hour thing) if it was purely a price per seat decision to set that price. However if it was a marketing exercise it was a good one!

As for Des Gruntled moaning about "elitist @rsh%l£$" we are talking about an "audience" with some old curmudgeonly codger who used to be James Bond, for goodness sake!

I'd rather chew of my own leg than listen to him witter on about "the olden days".

Whilst it is true that ticket touts are just cashing in on the Book Festival organisers for selling the tickets at far less than their true market value, nobody should believe for a second that they are "heroes" or doing anyone a good turn.

Ticket touts are nasty, greedy, cheating, thieving, lowlife scum.

The ticket re-sellers have shown some enterprise and should be warmly applauded.
Of much more concern to me is that there are people who would be willing to pay £100. For what? An hour or so listening to a second-rate actor and 90-day patriot droning on about a life of playing golf in his tax exiles?

Finbarr reckons: "Ticket touts are nasty, greedy, cheating, thieving, lowlife scum."

Nope, they're free-market heroes of the capitalist paradigm. Really, there should be statues.

Y'know, if the book festival guys were smart, they'd put on a talk "Diary of a Ticket Tout".

I think they'd get lots of interest.

But are they touts or free market entrepreneurs?

The big man is popular and if people want to spend their money on a ticket to see him rather than them being handed out to the usual loathsome luvvies who cares?

Show what ?

I can't see what all the fuss is about, a retired actor telling a few stories about his career, a bit of name-dropping here and there, £100 quid ? you must be mad, you can watch luvvies for nothing on Friday night on the Jonathan Ross show. I shink that ishh a load of cobblershh.

Fernando,

Heroes of the capitalist world...maybe heroes of the cockroach world.

If we all lived in the world you are quite happy to live in then the only people going to see events like this would be the rich, supplied by the cockroaches who are at the front of the queue to buy the low price tickets.

Sorry mate but we don't all just have to sit back and accept the free market without any restrictions. Personally, with events like these I would rather see the allocation of tickets decided on a more random basis rather than going to those who can afford to splash out £100, especially if the organisor has set the price below market level.

Surely there must be some security check the Festival organisors could use to stop this.

Shame on all of you who dare to make fun of Sir Sean Connery! You're simply jealous you don't make his money nor have a gorgeous wife like his. He is one class actor! And I would gladly shell out $100 to be able to see him in person! Shame! And him a Scot too!

Julian avers: "Personally, with events like these I would rather see the allocation of tickets decided on a more random basis rather than going to those who can afford to splash out £100"

Which simply means it's a lottery where the winners can make almost 100 Pounds.

This was the thinking at Glastonbury where people would waste an entire day repeatedly trying phone calls to get tickets. It wasted huge amounts of man-hours.

"Surely there must be some security check the Festival organisors could use to stop this."

Indeed that's what it takes to enforce this idealist nonsense. I'm a veteran of Glastonbury festivals and saw it gradually turn into a mini police-state through this kind of thinking. Who really wants the Edinburgh Festival destroyed the same way?

Let's not boast Sean Connery's inflated ego! I wouldn't support anything he involved in as he proports to say Scotland is great yet earns and runs with the money rather than pay taxes.

he too much to say what we should and shouldn't do. If it that great and he loves the place let him move back here.

One day he has a sling and has to be helped by his wife - the next he's on the golf course with no sling. Publicity stunt!

The same Sean was a St Cuthberts milkman that got sacked! Think he forgets that. We don't.

So don't pay £100 - they should be free!

There is no one 'ENRAGED' by this as intimated in the headline.

I did see an 'UPSET' though.

And a 'DISAPPOINTED'


ANGER AND OUTRAGE OVER SUBS USE OF NON ACCURATE ADJECTIVES.