What appears to be going on in modern publishing, is that a
specific price is wanted for every book: hardcovers about
$30.00, paperbacks about $10. To justify these prices,
publishers offer a lot of paper. I remember when Peyton Place
came out in paperback. That was the original "blockbuster"
book, and quite
'noir,' too, btw. It was about 400 pages as I recall and it
sold for 50 cents, 15 cents more than most paperbacks at that
time. It seems to me that publishers noted a great big book
could justify a higher price. Now, they don't want anything
but great big books and they'll ruin a perfectly good little
story by forcing it into fat format. This is not just bad for
consumers, its bad for the literature of our time. Suppose
this had been done to The Murders in the Rue Morgue, or The
Hound of the Baskervilles, or The Maltese Falcon, or The Big
Sleep, or The Postman Always Rings Twice. Would we be talking
about them today if these great stories had been forced into
a 500 page format? I doubt it. I wonder how many great
stories are already out there floundering in too much paper,
never to be recognized for what they are, due to narrow
minded publishers hungry for one-price-fits-all and that
price HIGH!
Patrick King
--- jacquesdebierue <
jacquesdebierue@yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, Patrick King
> <abrasax93@...> wrote:
> >
> > Okey. So by this calculation, a 35 cent book
in
> 1960
> > should cost about $2.25 today. The trick is,
no
> such
> > books exist. What's up with that?
>
> If you do it with the price of houses, you will
find
> a similar
> phenomenon... The general index doesn't tell you
how
> particular things
> appreciate. I recall reading a similar
comparison
> with movie tickets,
> which is a more appropriate comparison since
tickets
> and books belong
> to the same category (popular entertainment).
Also,
> the important
> factor is not how prices have risen but how
the
> purchasing power has
> changed. For example, how many Gold Medals could
the
> average guy buy
> in 1960 vs. today, what multiple of average
(or
> median) family income
> buys an average (or median) house, etc. Price
by
> itself doesn't tell
> the whole story. Even with food, the comparison
can
> be faulty if the
> diet has changed... and entire categories
of
> products exist now that
> didn't exist back then. It's not so easy.
>
> Mind you, I do support the $2.25 paperback, but
only
> Dover offers
> those and the books are out of copyright.
>
> Best,
>
> mrt
>
>
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