Average Book Prices '97
By Lillian N. Gerhardt, Editor-in-Chief -- School Library Journal, 3/1/1997
If anybody asks you the average price of a new book in hardcover for children or young adults, forget the cents in the box above and say "$16, and going up." That's close enough for government work.
You'll find lots of picture books in the publishers announcements for their spring lists carrying a suggested list price of $15.99. A bellwether few carry $17.99 price tags. So do some titles for young adult fiction and nonfiction.
Why the price creep? It's not the cost of paper or printing or postage. Nor are the authors or illustrators getting cut better deals than they've ever had. It traces to two factors.
The first factor is that finely tuned software programs allow publishers to track the actual costs of preparing a new title for sale more precisely than they've ever been able to do in the past.
The more important factor, however, is the publishers' unwillingness to pay taxes on inventory. To keep inventory low, they've opted for smaller print runs on new children's books, which take longer to sell. When these books do take off, the publishers have to go back to the printer, which costs more. So, the suggested sales prices get jacked up.
What's different about 1997 is a real rise in the level of outrage librarians are venting about the bindings that grow weaker as the price tags go higher. The following letter from Martha Everett at the Maumee (OH) City Schools is typical of what School Library Journal's editors hear in a rising chorus of discontent at workshops and conferences of both teachers and librarians.
Dear Editor:It is time that publishers be taken to task for some of the shoddy workmanship on both paperbacks and hard cover books. How many of us have bought copies of a new, popular title only to have it returned to us with the pages separated from the cover or with pages falling out?
There's usually not enough money to purchase more and the book repair doesn't seem to last long either. With the cost of books being more expensive than ever, why can't librarians/media specialists expect their purchases to last for a reasonable period of time?
To which we would add the questions we've asked so often before on this page:
- Why aren't the library associations, state and national, pursuing this long-term binding boondoggle?
- Why do poorly bound books automatically cost libraries more when the designation "Reinforced Trade Edition" gets slapped on them--much more than bookstores have to pay?
Some answers to these questions may emerge from the federal lawsuit investigating the library pricing practices of Baker & Taylor, oldest among the country's book wholesalers. What a chance this provides to shine some daylight on the murk that surrounds short library discounts for children's and YA books that fall apart at a touch.
Average Book Prices Children's & Young Adult Books
| All Titles Grades 3-6 Junior High Up | 1997 $15.65 $15.81 $15.75 | 1996 $15.26 $15.34 $15.48 |
Renée Olson
Editor-in-Chief
rolson@slj.cahners.com
