[15710] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Reply on Book Prices
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Michael Hart)
Thu Mar 10 20:30:45 2005
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Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.60.0503101251160.23660@pglaf.org>
Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 12:51:43 -0800
Reply-To: "Michael S. Hart" <hart@pobox.com>
From: Michael Hart <hart@PGLAF.ORG>
To: PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU
Film Prices Versus Book Prices, A Follow Up On Book v Oil Prices
100 Million Dollar Films In Your Home For $10-$20; $23-$42 Books
The newest Star Wars installment will be coming out in two months
and for about the same price as the average hardback fiction book
we will be able to go see it and then buy the DVD in some months.
Why can we buy a copy of a film that hundreds or thousands worked
on for $10-$20 the day of release, after seeing it on big screens
for $5-$8 a few months earlier???
A single person can write a book in a small fraction of the hours
spent making a film; Good-bye Mr. Chips was written in four days,
The Little Price is hardly any longer, and The Bridges of Madison
County not much longer than The Little Prince; yet Madison County
costs about $20 to bring home. Yes, an editor might be called on
to spend a few days or even a few weeks making changes, an artist
may spend a few days or weeks on the cover art, and a small army:
accountants, Madison Avenue types, etc., might spend a day or two
figuring out the campaign strategy, but all these are included in
the film industry too, and have been included in those publishing
houses since before we were born.
Back in the late 1950's, Roger Ebert and I used to go to the same
Princess Theater on Main Street and see great double features for
$.25 for the entire afternoon on Saturdays, about the same prices
as for a gallon of gas just down the street.
*
Yet we have seen in my own lifetime that the price of a paperback
book that was a quarter back when gasoline was a quarter a gallon
at the pump [full-service mind you] now costs 3-4 times the price
of a gallon of gas after an era in which gas prices have been one
of top stories in the news, and tickets to our movie theaters are
about the same price as for paperback books.
Why are gas prices and movie prices talked about in the news, but
book prices are never discussed???
In fact, as I predicted in a speech to our local American Library
Association chapter, Dan Rather's final appearance as CBS' anchor
led off with the news about how high gas prices are going. These
prices are now around $2, up from $.25 about 50 years ago; that's
about 8 times as much in 2005 as in 1955. My $.25 paperbacks out
of that era are now about $7, or about 28 times as much.
8 Times As Much For Gas vs 28 Times As Much For A Paperback.
And gas prices have made the news hundreds of times in many years
between when the Baby Boomers were growing up and today, but book
prices have never made the news that way a single time, when book
prices went up 28 times while gas prices went up 8 times.
Yet you never hear the oil millionaires and billionaires complain
even though they do continue to go after oil subsidies.
So why all the complaining from the publishers whose product went
up in price so incredibly much more than oil prices?
***Footnotes
Gas prices are news.
Movie prices are news.
Food prices are news.
Cable prices are news.
[Ours just went up another ~10%, now well over $40, up from those
initial prices of $8, or 5 times as much as a few decades ago, as
reported constantly by our news media, but not one word about the
price of books going up.]
Tuition prices are news.
[This is in the news nearly every single year, but not along side
book prices.]
CEO salary hyperinflation is news.
[This was one dead herring sent in.]
McDonald's prices for a $.30 1950s meal of burger, fries and coke
are no higher today than a comparable amount of gas.
[This was one more dead herring sent in.]
