Quote:
Originally Posted by Sirtel
I agree with this, and btw I personally haven't complained about prices or evil publishers. Book prices are really pretty affordable, in my opinion. There are plenty of books under my personal price limit, even new books, and I don't mind waiting for those that are released with a higher price.
Of course I'm speaking as a customer in Europe. From what I've read here on MR, books are much more expensive in Australia, for example. That's probably perceived as an injustice by many Australian customers, because they're an English-speaking market and books in English are cheaper in the UK and US.
Books are very expensive in my native language too, but that's understandable, as the Estonian-speaking market is exceedingly small. Still, the price difference with locally published books is the main reason I buy most of my fiction in English, so I can sympathize with those who complain about high local prices.
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Book prices in a given location tend to be driven by a number of things, such as legacy contracts, different publishers, and local taxes, tariffs, exchange rates, shipping cost and local laws. Things can get very complex very quickly. Things that don't make much sense today may be because of some contract that was signed 20 years ago. It's a lot easier and emotionally more satisfying to blame some big company, but usually even big corporate accountants aren't trying to stick it to someone.
One of the downsides with web boards and threads is that conversations become co-mingled. Thus, a post may be a response to multiple other posters.