Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
. . . the penny dreadfulls came out during the later half of the 1800's and arguably served the same market as the pulp market. . . .
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Correct.
Plus, Mudie's lending library, another way to get books cheaply, was tremendously popular. The rise of public libraries killed that business, but then we started seeing bestseller rental shelves in places like pharmacies. Then that business died, at least in the United States, when libraries started buying or leasing multiple copies of current bestsellers.
One of the great things about the book market, going back for centuries, is that readers have a choice of price points. So even if it was true that a new hardback book was far more expensive than a movie ticket, that wouldn't be the right comparison. Until fairly recently, the movie ticket price was what the typical viewer of an uncut, uninterrupted, film paid, whereas the typical reader of an unexpurgated book paid far less than the hardback cover price.