[mrmikel]

Part of the pricing dynamic is the shift to large corporate ownership of publishing houses.

The corporate types don't like to take risks. So they stay with and promote established authors. There aren't so many of them, so this relatively small group gets bid up.

The small publishing houses can't compete in this competition so they drop out and many get absorbed or fail.

So there are fewer publishing houses and bigger and they all act the same and the bidding for the established authors keeps going up and up. The corporate types have to make large money to feed their large overhead. Both of these combine to raise the price without changing the product one iota, except to pressure authors to write for a wider group.

Customers object, but have no choice until electronic technologies come along and change the game. Neilmarr and the like can offer works at lower prices because he doesn't have that overhead. He has to take a chance with new authors in order to differentiate his authors from everybody else.

This is what they call the creative destruction of capitalism. Sometimes it is just plain destruction, but it looks like the capitalist system is working as it should. It is messy and slow, but it better than having things dictated by a bunch of aparatchiks in a government office.