alt Hacker NewsBooks are not too expensive
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When I was a child my parents told me they would always buy me a book no matter what. They would take me to bookstores of all stripes and let me wander.
I would spend hours walking the sections looking at whatever caught my eye. Then I would pick out a couple to take home and read. This was how I discovered the world.
I think this had a bigger impact on my education then anything else in my childhood and I owe all bookstores a debt of gratitude. I am deeply saddened by the death of the used bookstore and still try to buy a stack of books whenever I am traveling and find a store.
The quality of books is horrible these days though.
Like I feel the paper is not of the same quality. Maybe it's because they now print them on demand ?
The bigger problem for me is buying Ebooks without DRM, which are cheaper than the paperback. I see no reason why I should be paying the same (or often more) than the paperback version.
Just let me buy the ebook and let me own it.
Right now, after pirating it, I have to find the author's patreon / something and contribute some money that way. It shouldn't be this hard to give someone money.
At some point you just have to move to Ebooks. It's way cheaper (usually ~6x cheaper) and it's much more convenient, as you always have your entire library with you. Sometimes even in duplicate, i.e. on more than one device at the same time, in the same place.
I was very reluctant to make the move at first, as I love everything about physical books -- their feel, the way they smell, the cover art -- but I was accumulating too many, and finding space was becoming a hassle. The adjustment period was short, and now I'd rather have my reader over a physical book.
The only exceptions I'd make are for reference books that don't have good electronic versions on account of graphics or tables that don't render properly.
I agree books, in general, aren't too expensive. But, I'm surprised at the variance in book prices. Some great technical books are $30, others $65. Of course, textbooks take that to the extreme.
Also, just do softcover or hardcover - or let use choose either from the publish date. Why do I have to wait for a softcover?
Japan and France to me stand out as places where pop culture-y books are really fairly priced. And both of these are places where there are established printing formats that don't try to make the books huge.
Walking around in an Australian bookstore at least I am still a bit flabbergasted by how everything is printed to be huge, everything a slightly different size, lots of paperbacks with glossy covers etc.
Not that I think this is a "cost of materials" thing in itself. But it all compounds on itself to where now a bookstore is huge to have just some random nonsense, and people will probably buy 2 instead of 3 books.
I agree that books are probably not "too expensive", I just wish that the mass market paperbacks would be smaller more straightforward and less of a precious little item.
To anyone interested in this stuff and in Tokyo(... well, Saitama), the Kadokawa Culture Museum [0] is ... probably the biggest building commemorating a publishing house in the world? The pictures don't do it justice, the building is ginormous.
But in it there's a bit of a (corporate approved) history of Kadokawa built into the museum. Their core thing that found them success: standardising a small pocketbook format for printing their books, having almost everything print to that size, with the same font etc, and selling it at a low enough price that college students could buy more books than they could ever read.
Printing all your cheap stuff in A6 sizes mean you can have a _loooot_ of books at home before worrying about much.
eBay->title search->sort price low to high-> usually results in under $5 free shipping for almost any oldish book. Also for some reason the sellers on eBay are almost always cheaper (sometimes significantly) than their Alibris/Abe/Amazon storefront counterparts. Same with Thriftbooks, cheaper on their eBay storefront than direct, especially since TB raised their free shipping minimum...
I'm seeing books get released for 60/70$ a pop now in the tech market. That's insane. I don't mind the 35-40$ price which is kind of pricey, and books have a short shelf life.
I think an issue that isn't addressed is that books feel more expensive not compared to the 60s benchmark, but say compared to free online resources with comparable information. I'm defaulting more to online circulated pdf books and only buy the book when I have liked it and want the physical copy as a keepsake.
I've never been a big buyer of new books since they were always kinda expensive. That was especially true as a child. It is still somewhat true as an adult. The place where I notice the greatest change in price is in the used end of the market, and that is mostly because the types of places where I would source cheap books seem to be less common. (When I do stumble across those places today, they are just as cheap. Maybe cheaper. Yet they are also harder to find.)
That said, the bigger issue is likely perception. The value of a book is lowered by the free reading material you can find online. An ereader is roughly the price of an archaic feeling dead-tree textbook. The glut of books chasing market trends means that you are more likely to end up with chaff than wheat. While the great books may be worth their sticker price, the pedestrian ones definitely have to compete with those perceptions.
If the price was the cause of people reading less, you’d expect to see libraries become overwhelmed with traffic.
I don’t read enough, but when I did I borrowed most books and only bought the ones I wanted to read again.
Using a 1960s book as a benchmark feels weird to me. I'd expect books to be more expensive when they come out and less expensive when they're the fiftieth low-cost reprint 60 years later. Sure, it's a classic, but it's hardly a "must-have". At best, it's something you need to read for school, although many school districts have dropped it from their lists.
Having said that, I think the complaints about book prices are mostly an excuse for preferring to spend time on social media or download pirated books for free.
Leaving aside the question of whether they're priced "correctly", books are cheaper than a Doordash meal or a computer game we buy and never finish. Would the average person really read more books if they were $4.99 instead of $29.95?
Summary: Inflation is a thing. Publishers on average get 5%-15% EBITDA which is lower than many other generic industries.
The floor price of books is higher these days because the ordinary paperback is dead and and trade-paperbacks are the lowest cost option and they tend to be most of the cost of a hardback.
How about those $130 textbooks?
Two days ago, I purchased Timothy Snyder's two most recent books from a local bookstore for $40. (On Tyranny & On Freedom) What should be cheaper are school and textbooks. Those seem priced like a racket.
Boycott Amazon, Buycott Local and support your neighbors
Yes, I agree. Libgen, Scihub, Anna's Library, and Archive.org with de-DRM is completely free.
If the fucks like Altman and ilk can run 'pirate everything and sell the proceeds', you damned right I'll pirate without selling anything. And I won't even feel bad.
The professional pirates normally were charged criminally. Nope, now theyre too big to fail.
The only one I'd want sadly is.. https://newandroidbook.com/
To be fair, this article is partially true. Now, allow me to pour some gasoline/petrol/benzine around this thread.
Have you purchased a college course required book recently?
There is a market monopoly by Pearson, Wiley,Cengage, and McGraw.
Buy the eBook, or the actual book with a CD in the back, but cannot access the pictures because the code can be use only once! (often the codes do not work at all)
Updated every 2 to 3 years, minor changes sufficient enough the break the previous versions. e.g., randomized tests, samples and alike.
Captive audience. If Jacky teaches the course, bet your bippy it is Jacky's book you will be buying, no ifs or buts about it.
I can do the same for certification. Have you seen the PMP certification book? Grey paper with gray text republished annually, meaning of words and descriptions are changes and tests are adjusted specifically to confuse on wording. Or, have you tried to by an international standard like ISO? $300 spiral binder, assigned to you, cannot be transferred.
So, are books not too expensive? Depends on the type of book.