Evangeline Walton would like a word with you.
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And of course the sub-sub-genres centered around barn-raising and field plowing…
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When I find the “perfect” book in a used bookstore I say “Mine!” and hug it to my chest while doing a happy dance in my head (or sometimes not just in my head if it is from a series/author I am collecting). After I find that one, I usually don’t leave until I have a bag full of new friends.
I personally classify people who shelve books wrong as belonging in the circle of hell with people who talk in the theatre - if you don’t know where the book goes then leave it at the counter. I’ve done inventory - it is super annoying to know you have stock but can’t find it where it should be.
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As @Skeptic said efficiency has a lot to do with it but I wonder if the combination of volume and the sales of other items also help subsidize some of those low-priced items. If people were only buying the $4 (with shipping) used books it probably wouldn’t be worth it for Amazon. But if someone buying a penny book happens to see something else they like (especially with Amazon’s “You might also like…”) that helps Amazon.
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Well, make no mistake, Amazon gets their cut, even if the book sells for only a penny. The seller doesn’t get all of the 3.99. For a casual seller, they take 99c off the top, and then they add a few incidental fees as well. They do offer another service level, where they don’t charge that 99c and instead charge a $39.99 flat fee every month, but that is only worth it if you sell more than 40 items in a month, which I wasn’t. And I couldn’t hope to compete by raising my sales price above 1c because why would anyone buying consider paying more when they can buy it for a penny? I know that I wouldn’t.
The marketplace they’ve created is just totally rigged against the casual bookseller, which is why I got out.
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Also the Joneses, and Lloyd Alexander 
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Ok, ok. I didn’t consider that there might be new interpetations since I read it back in school. As an apology to Ms. Walton, I just downloaded her version as an ebook. The Venerable Bede would be mystified.
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My first job out of school was as a filing clerk at the Supreme Court of NSW.
10% of the job consisted of retrieving and delivering the required files to the courtrooms each day. The other 90% of the job consisted of searching for the handful of court documents that had been misfiled.
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Oh, man. My college job was hospital radiology file clerk. For us, not just misfiled, but borrowed and forgotten, or in some cases, taken to hoard so another medical team couldn’t get their hands on them first.
Every so often we’d have to make a special request for departments to hand over all files left in sleeping quarters, personal offices, and break rooms.
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