Mass market paperbacks will all but vanish from the publishing scene in a few weeks

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by nabsltd

This just points out one of the largest issues with poverty...being forced to pay too much per "unit" because you don't have enough money to buy larger quantities or amortize the larger up-front cost of something that will save you money in the long run.

This is the Captain Samuel Vimes “Boots” theory of socioeconomic unfairness (from Men at Arms):

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. [...]

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

[nabsltd]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

This is the Captain Samuel Vimes “Boots” theory of socioeconomic unfairness (from Men at Arms):

I never read that, but it is exactly correct, with one exception:

Today, there are companies who are actively marketing the cheaper boots to those with less money so that the company gets a continuous steam of income over time.