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Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
The price of books is higher, when adjusted for inflation, than it was in the early 70s.
However, it is exceedingly rare for one specific product to track the CPIX perfectly at a given time. Would you expect the percentage changes in the cost of cars, oil, rice and paper to be identical at all times?
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The price of books is way, way higher today. Not just for one particular book, but the whole industry. A normal paperback in 1970 cost about 75 cents, which would translate to $4.29 in 2010 if the price followed inflation. So books are at least double what inflation would indicate, maybe even three times.
That's well out of any range of what you'd normally expect, even for a product that wasn't tracking CPI "perfectly".
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As a comparison: Ford Mustang Fastback, 1970, sticker price $2,771 (or $15,000 in 2009 dollars). Ford Mustang V6 2011, $23,000. Assuming the two are roughly equivalent vehicles, we could assert that "Mustangs outpaced the CPIX by 50%."
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That's not really a fair comparison. A Mustang is a particular model of car, and changes in it's price aren't indicative of price changes over the whole industry, which is what we're talking about with books. I did check for industry averages, and the average price of a car in 1970 was $3,900 or $22,400 in 2010 dollars. The average price of a car in 2010 is $28,400. So car prices are about 25% higher than inflation would indicate. But if it had followed like books have, the average car in 2010 would have to cost from $50,000 to $70,000.
On top of that, as has already been pointed out, a car in 2010 is not the same thing as a car in 1970. Classic muscle car panache and mystique put aside, a typical driver in 2010 would probably consider a 1970 Mustang to be a dangerous piece of polluting junk. So you're actually getting something for your 25% above inflation.
Books, on the other hand, haven't improved in any way that I can detect over the years.
For myself, I've always figured that people don't bitch too much about the price of paper books because they know that they will eventually be able to get everything at half the cover price in a used book store, or borrowed from friends (or shared with friends).
Those options don't exist with ebooks.