SLJ's Average Book Prices:
Enhancing Your Buying Power

The most salient point to be make about the cost of books this year is that regardless of their price, the recession has seen to it that you will have less money to spend on them in 2002–2003 than you did in the previous school year. According to our survey of more than 750 school librarians nationwide, school media center materials budgets are expected to shrink by about 1.7 percent, an amount that could have been significantly worse, given some states' dire economic circumstances. Public libraries have fared somewhat better, with projected increases in materials budgets of about 3 percent in FY 2002, according to Library Journal's public library budget report in its January issue.

The recession notwithstanding, since 1986, the first year SLJ began its annual spring rite of reporting the price of books, the average cost of a children's/young adult hardcover book has risen by nearly $5.60, or about 30 percent. Calculated on an annual basis, the increases have run an average of 35 cents per year, or 2.65 percent. Although former SLJ Editor-in-Chief Lillian Gerhardt periodically pointed out in decades past that alas, book prices had dipped slightly, that phenomenon hasn't occurred since 1996. In fact, this year's 1.1 percent increase signifies a temporary ebb in the aggressive pricing policy publishers initiated in 1999. Consider that in the last three years, average book prices have increased by roughly 70 cents per year, double the historical yearly average.

With its steady, inexorable path upward, the rising price of a book is an economic certainty over which you realistically exert little influence. You do have influence, however, over your buying power—the money you actually have to spend versus the money you could have to spend.

I urge you to be proactive and make an investment in your budgetary future: Apply for Department of Education grants for school library materials, made possible by the Reed Amendment. By showing an overwhelming need for funding for books and related materials, school librarians can make a case that they need vastly more than the baseline amount of $12.5 million allocated for FY 2002, the law's maiden year.

The fledgling program's sponsor, Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), says he is determined to see Congress appropriate $100 million for the initiative. If Reed meets his goal, federal aid will reach roughly 10 percent of the annual amount of school library materials spending (more than $1 billion). At press time, grant applications were not yet available, but to learn more, go to literacyandschoollibraries@ed.gov, or e-mail Maggie McFeeley at the same address.