Why Is This Book So Expensive

Why are books so expensive in USA?

Guilty as charged:I wrote this back in my thug-lawyer days (smiles). Check out the price…$550.00!Nyal and I didn’t set the price. We wrote it on contract for Mathew Bender, for a set fee, and once we sent the copy in to our editor never thought much about it.There was a market for this type of book at the time (early 1990’s) but very few law firms even have a physical library these days. My guess is solo, general practitioners might still need something like this for a quick substantive refresher.I will confess, it’s always fun to pull my copy off the shelf and crow about being a “published author.”Thanks for playing Quora with me!Steve Jennette

Why are books in Canada so expensive?

Canadian importers charge the US price, plus a surcharge to balance exchange rate differences, plus 10%. Why books cost more in Canada This was set up to deal with fluctuating exchange rates.In addition, the smaller Canadian market makes it harder to gain economies of scale.And of course Canadian geography means higher distribution costs. Other costs might also be higher in Canada (labour, warehousing, etc.).I hear you… “but why are e-books more expensive?” Publishers set the price that they think the market will bear. They believe Canadians will pay more. Or publishers just think that’s how they should do it, because it has always been that way. (“Country pricing”) Why Are Prices Higher In Canada Than In The U.S.? E-Book Industry Bets You're Willing To Pay

Why are books so expensive in the U.S.?

Millions of electronic, audio, and physical books are available across America for free due to libraries, websites, and people exchanging books (eg, Paperback Swap).Millions more are available at low or discounted prices, such as through ThriftBooks, Amazon, yard sales, and library surplus sales.I have no reason to believe that regular-price books are more expensive in the United States than in other countries.But what makes book prices in the United States as high as they are?Books are a massive industry in the United States. More than 300,000 titles are released (or rereleased) per year, more than any other nation save China in number of titles and to the a bunch of nations (led by the UK) per capita, 15 times more titles than similarly-populated Brazil (they have a high illiteracy rate), and 50% more titles per person than similarly-cultured Canada. We're not the most publishing nation, but we're very close.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/...http://www.theguardian.com/books...We're not the biggest readers in the world; we read half as much per week as the Indians.http://www.theparisreview.org/bl...But we love to buy books. There's a big supply and big demand. Profit margins make all that publishing possible (and profitable). Those economic factors help set prices where they are.College textbooks in particular are unusually expensive in the USA. Publishers and authors (often professors) know that students will pay basically any price to pass a class, so they charge whatever they want. It's a genuine racket, especially when the textbook's author is also the professor requiring his students to buy his overpriced book.But that's a small subset of the book market, and not a typical one. Expensive textbooks do not prove expensive books.

Why are printed books so expensive?

Let’s look at a typical large format paperback, that will be sold through mainstream bookstores. Let’s say that it’s quite successful, but not a bestseller. Say it’s going to sell 10,000 copies to readers.Let’s also say that it has a list price (on the cover) of $15.95.The bookstore buys that copy for 60% of the list price, which is $9.57. They use that 40% to cover the cost of staff, rent, lights and heat, shelving and chairs and such, office supplies, marketing, etc. Bookstores barely break even.The bookstore buys from a wholesaler, most of the time. The wholesaler pays 45% of the list price, which is $7.18. They use their 15% of the total to pay for warehousing, staff to pick and pack and ship the books, customer service reps, and accountants, facilities maintenance, office supplies, utility bills, etc.The wholesaler usually buys from a distributor, unless the publisher is REALLY big. The publisher gets about 33% of the list price from the distributor. That’s $5.26. On 10,000 copies, that’s $52,600.That’s the publisher’s revenue — but not their profits.From that, the publisher pays the author royalties. For a paperback of this size, it will be 7.5% of list price for the first 5,000 copies sold, 8.5% of list for the next 5,000 copies sold, and 10% thereafter. In this case, that’s $12,760.Then there is the printing, paper, and binding cost (PPB), which will run about $1.75 per copy. But you have to print 13,000 copies to sell 10,000, because you’ll have about 30% returns — books you ship to the stores, but that don’t get sold, and get sent back for a full refund. So, your PPB will run about $22,750.But wait, you also have editing (acquisitions, content, line, and copyediting — or some combination thereof). Your text layout needs to be done, and your cover design. The book needs to be proofread after the layout (this means comparing the edited version to the laid-out version, to ensure that there are no new errors).All of that takes about $5,000.Marketing will cost about $2500.So, the costs of the book run about $43,010. And that doesn’t cover any rent, or utilities, or anything.For all of their overhead and a tiny profit, the company will have $9,590. Imagine trying to run a company on that, let alone paying yourself a living wage.THAT is why books cost so much.Textbooks and many other types of books cost far, far, far more to create. And they sell far, far, far fewer copies on average.Does that help explain why costs are so high?

Why are books so expensive in Australia?

Australia? you should see the prices in south Africa. A book that cost me £32 brand new in the UK, sells for £58 in south Africa. Let's put this in perspective. A good wage in SA in about £650 p/m!

Why are some books so extremely expensive?

Books with a very limited market (for example advanced graduate school text books) tend to be expensive.  For example, suppose I wrote a text on designing UV instruments for observing diffuse interstellar matter.  Worldwide there are probably 10 students that might buy such a book annually.  The lifetime of such a text is about a decade, so I'm hoping to sell 100 copies.   My employer doesn't pay me to write books, so I would be doing this on my own time.  Let's say it only took me 500 hours to write it.   That means each copy, in addition to covering publishing costs, needs to cover 5 hours of my time.   To make the math easy, lets say I want a minimal return of $30 per hour.  That would that my take on each book sold would be $150.  The publisher probably wants  some money out of the deal, too, so we're talking about a $300 book.That should explain why there are no text books on designing UV instruments for observing diffuse interstellar matter, why I won't be writing one, and why no publisher would publish it even if I did.