[lumpynose]

It's probably understood by everyone here but you guys are talking about novels. I.e., books that are all text, typically printed with black ink. Regarding the costs of producing books, books that use extensive color are much more expensive to produce.

Decades before I retired I taught myself to knit but then stopped, and then after I retired took it up again. My work was computer system administration and programming. Those books could easily cost $40+ and typically $35 was about as low as they went. They were primarily just text, maybe some diagrams done in Illustrator or such, but no need for color photographs. Then when I started knitting after I retired I was surprised at how low the prices are for knitting books; $20 or so. And typically lots of color photographs. The income of knitters, typically housewives, is much lower than computer programmers and system administrators and the books are priced accordingly.

And I worked at a university. I've seen plenty of books for the academics that had breathtaking prices (e.g., Springer Verlag), presumably because the market is so small.