I just looked at one of my “comfort” books—great books that you go to for the book version of a fluffy blanket and a mug of cocoa.
Happened to look at the spine, and noticed that it was four dollars suggested price. Turns out it was printed in ‘91.
Most of the paperbacks of similar size and quality that I’ve seen of late are either nine or ten dollars, and I KNOW they don’t stand up as well.
If this is the result of the *sarc* wonderful */sarc* publishing industry, ebooks may have come along just in time to save reading.
5 comments:
Doubled in twenty years?
That's not bad at all; it's not difficult to find many things that have doubled in price during the last three years.
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But are they durable goods with the price printed on them?
Fuel costs are driving that up too. Paper is surprisingly heavy to ship. I have a buddy who runs a Catholic gift shop and he hates selling books because there is practically no margin on them if he is going to stay competitive with the large volume dealers. Most folk just go to Amazon now.
heh... the price of gas has doubled in just the past three years.
Baron: i'm in the paper biz. yeah... fuel costs, no kidding.
Pretty sure I didn't miss a giant paper production cartel along the lines of the one in the middle east, though, and I KNOW printing and formatting costs have gone down, that there are fewer levels of editing, inventory control is down, and quality is DEFINITELY lower-- the old used books I buy last longer with normal use than the new ones. Even with labor and paper prices going up, that's a rather big increase. Even garden bricks didn't go up that much! (About a 50% increase, from memory.)
It's not like I'm expecting four dollar books when I KNOW that prices of most everything has gone up, but it's like all the things to lower cost have been ignored, and the stuff to raise it have been padded against.
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