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It was a deal that was too good to be true.
One of the world’s most coveted investment books — “Margin of Safety: Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor,” the 1991 classic by Baupost Group’s Seth Klarman — popped up recently in Amazon’s Kindle store for $9.99.
Finance nerds went crazy.
The out-of-print book by the legendary hedgie is highly prized and used physical copies are regularly hawked online for up to $2,000 on Amazon AMZN, +0.48% , which owns Kindle.
For readers without a slide rule or a calculator at hand, the Kindle price is a 99.5% discount from the web’s highest price on the book.
So popular was this esoteric title that between July 6, when it first emerged in the Kindle store, according to Bloomberg, and Tuesday, it had climbed to No. 16 among most popular titles for investing and business on the site’s best-seller list.
But as is often the case in investing, buying early was key.
“Margin of Safety” was yanked from the e-commerce site hours after Bloomberg reported it was available. It seems Kindle never had the right to sell the book.
Baupost Group called the digital version of the book “unauthorized.”
“The Kindle version of ‘Margin of Safety: Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor’ on Amazon is an unauthorized version being sold in violation of its registered copyright, which is owned by Seth Klarman,” a Baupost spokesperson said in a statement Tuesday.
“Mr. Klarman has not authorized republication of ‘Margin of Safety,’ electronically or in any other format. Our legal department is taking and will continue to take appropriate action with respect to this matter,” the statement continued.
Reps from Amazon did not immediately respond to requests to comment.
It was not immediately clear what would happen to the already-purchased digital versions of the book. Kindle seemingly has the ability to take back purchases of the unauthorized book.