Why are books so expensive now? My copy of Philip K Dick’s “The Transmigration of Timothy Archer” (Panther Books) has advertisements for paperback runs at the time. The most expensive were £1.50 per copy, but many are half that price. But let’s take the high ball price; this was in 1982 which, adjusting for inflation, is £7.18 today. The Kindle edition of a recently published book, Thomas Pynchon’s “Shadow Ticket” is £11.99 on Amazon. That is about £5 more expensive, just for an ebook. Are publishers losing so much money they need to sell at a higher price?
>>24830829£1.50 even at the time sounds incredibly cheap. I have a Penguin Classics copy of The Brothers Karamazov released in a single volume in 1982 and on the back it states that it cost £5.99, adjusted for inflation thats £21. Whereas a copy in Waterstones today of Penguin Classics TBK is £9.99. So it's actually cheaper today in that case. I think maybe Sci-Fi paperbacks were cheap and considered like Comic books, like Pulp.
>>24830899They were mass paperbacks, which were pulp. You're right.
>>24830829The price of raw materials to make books have gone up for reasons. Also mass-market paperback formats are less common.I started shopping at thrift book stores when I started reading more because it was pretty clear I'd have to read on my computer or in a library if I wanted to do that. Nothing wrong with the library but I know not it's not always a convenience. I think over half of my personal library are books that I got for one or two dollars.It's wild because some people donate books that came out recently. And sometimes you find things that are old. I even found a library rebinding of printed in 1936. So now I get more of a feel for the kinds of books you just won't find for cheap, and thankfully it's not too many.
Yeah I just spent about $300 for 5 books, books are incredibly overpriced these daysIt's over...
>>24831385>$300 for 5 booksHow. What did you get?
>>24831475Uni books can be 150 usd a pop. It’s a racket man.
>>24830829Now try living in a country like Australia and having to pay added expenses.
They have to make up for the money they lose on guys like me who only reads free stuff
>>24831745I hardly spent a dollar on books in college, I just downloaded everything on libgen or bought the second-newest edition of the textbook. Right about when I graduated, they started including online codes with the textbooks and profs would assign questions on the publishers' websites so you couldn't get away with older editions anymore
>>24831829What cunts.
>>24830829Depends on the book. >I want a nice little paperback of a classic like Sophocles’ plays or the three musketeers?I can get that for 5 bucks at a big book store>I want a niche history book like Alexander to actium?I’m going to be paying through the nose for that one.I’ve been hoping that Amazon’s system of printing on demand might alleviate it but maybe that just wishful thinking, they would still need to wrangle of the rights and whatnot.
>>24831863I've never bought an Amazon print on demand book for under $20 CAD, but they are consistently nice quality. They're all trade paperbacks too for some reason?
>>24831829Same, but when I was in college, pdf scans were much harder to come by. At the end of the year, they would place book donation bins outside of the professor's offices, and it was extremely common for professors to dump their current edition for a newer one. I'd just pop the top of the cardboard bins and take the books for the next year. Turns out the only new thing in the next edition was the price.
