Make room for me on the buying a hard cover book bench. My all time favorite author, Tad Williams, I will buy hard covers practically when the ink is still drying. I have a 'thing' about having all his books as first editions.
I'm this way with Rachel Cusk - I can't resist buying her books immediately - her OUTLINE trilogy being my introduction to her work - was so happy to see she had quite a few backlist titles when I read Outline in 2015 (which I didn't have to buy in hardcover)!
This is all spot on. For my birthday Cheryl gave me “Who By Fire: War, Atonement, and the Resurrection of Leonard Cohen” by Matti Friedman. 186 pages hardcover plus endnotes and dimensions slightly smaller than the average hardcover book. Cover price? $32.95! Add in tax and we’re talking maybe $35 to $38 total depending where you buy it. That’s not just ridiculous for the consumer: it hurts the author. Why buy a book at those prices? Publisher Penguin (and so many others) are driving people away from a potential purchase. That affects the publisher and bookseller when people won’t spend such ridiculous amounts, which drives down sales and ultimately hurts author in terms of royalties and more book deals when it’s proven by balance sheets that this writer is a bad risk because they can’t sell books. A real lose/lose/lose/lose situation for publisher, bookseller, author, and reader. Cheryl found a less expensive and reasonably-priced alternative, but even so. Books are overpriced and everyone involved with the purchase loses.
As one friend said, hardcovers are a racket - his parents never bought them for that reason - they'd wait for the paperback or get the book from the library. For one, if publishers didn't wildly overpay for books - including those by bestselling authors and celebrities - they wouldn't be so reliant on hardcovers for revenue, which I almost never want to buy - but will for a friend since friends have bought my hardcovers over the years.
But from my hopeful searches of library catalogues even THEY feel these books are too costly.Givingvthem a populist title might help..I bought Why Women read Fiction in paperback for thirty odd dollars and Elaine Showalter's A literature of their own secondhand for ten dollars!Of course the hunt is at least half the fun!.Pat.
In my universe hardbacks are often twice the price of paperbacks with "academic"tomes being gaspingly expensive.I've started to read nonfiction about literature but seeing the prices makes me cry..one on universities in fiction being $200 odd.
i was thinking about how academic HC books sometimes cost 3 figures when they do a tiny print run - a friend's book was in this category (about comic old men in Renaissance era plays - not a subject likely to grip a lot of readers, alas!) - the only purchases he could hope for were from libraries!
Make room for me on the buying a hard cover book bench. My all time favorite author, Tad Williams, I will buy hard covers practically when the ink is still drying. I have a 'thing' about having all his books as first editions.
I'm this way with Rachel Cusk - I can't resist buying her books immediately - her OUTLINE trilogy being my introduction to her work - was so happy to see she had quite a few backlist titles when I read Outline in 2015 (which I didn't have to buy in hardcover)!
This is all spot on. For my birthday Cheryl gave me “Who By Fire: War, Atonement, and the Resurrection of Leonard Cohen” by Matti Friedman. 186 pages hardcover plus endnotes and dimensions slightly smaller than the average hardcover book. Cover price? $32.95! Add in tax and we’re talking maybe $35 to $38 total depending where you buy it. That’s not just ridiculous for the consumer: it hurts the author. Why buy a book at those prices? Publisher Penguin (and so many others) are driving people away from a potential purchase. That affects the publisher and bookseller when people won’t spend such ridiculous amounts, which drives down sales and ultimately hurts author in terms of royalties and more book deals when it’s proven by balance sheets that this writer is a bad risk because they can’t sell books. A real lose/lose/lose/lose situation for publisher, bookseller, author, and reader. Cheryl found a less expensive and reasonably-priced alternative, but even so. Books are overpriced and everyone involved with the purchase loses.
As one friend said, hardcovers are a racket - his parents never bought them for that reason - they'd wait for the paperback or get the book from the library. For one, if publishers didn't wildly overpay for books - including those by bestselling authors and celebrities - they wouldn't be so reliant on hardcovers for revenue, which I almost never want to buy - but will for a friend since friends have bought my hardcovers over the years.
But from my hopeful searches of library catalogues even THEY feel these books are too costly.Givingvthem a populist title might help..I bought Why Women read Fiction in paperback for thirty odd dollars and Elaine Showalter's A literature of their own secondhand for ten dollars!Of course the hunt is at least half the fun!.Pat.
In my universe hardbacks are often twice the price of paperbacks with "academic"tomes being gaspingly expensive.I've started to read nonfiction about literature but seeing the prices makes me cry..one on universities in fiction being $200 odd.
i was thinking about how academic HC books sometimes cost 3 figures when they do a tiny print run - a friend's book was in this category (about comic old men in Renaissance era plays - not a subject likely to grip a lot of readers, alas!) - the only purchases he could hope for were from libraries!