Book Prices

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Originally posted by 500_Apples:
[b]I'm not sure if this applies to book, but I know that clothing in Canada is typically 2 or 3 times more expensive than clothing in the USA.[/b]

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Do you have any evidence for that? Besides, can't a Canadian purchase a pair of jeans or shoes or whatever online just as easily as an American...from the same online store at the same price (other than GST)?

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Originally posted by Sven:
[b]

Do you have any evidence for that? Besides, can't a Canadian purchase a pair of jeans or shoes or whatever online just as easily as an American...from the same online store at the same price (other than GST)?[/b]

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Online shopping for clothing is not how most people buy their clothes. People like to try them on, etc. Additionally, liquidations don't take place online. A lot of stores ask you to shop in person and won't ship. The price differential is an observation of mine and people I know who are either from the USA or who go to the USA regularly.

A friend of mine just spent a week in Nashville to visit his girlfriend's family. Up until that point, he never believed me when I told him Canadian Wal Marts were small and charged high prices. He was shocked that American Wal Marts have multiple parking lots, and that it's faster to drive your car to the other parking lot than to walk across the store. A good experience of his when he went into another store and got a leather jacket originally priced at 200$ for 20$. Another basic example is that TJ MAXX is half as expensive as Winner's. My last time at TJ MAXX I bought 80 dollar khakis for 18 dollars, they lasted about a year and a half.

The same is true for electronics. I bought a digital camera in the USA in May 2006 and shipped it to my friend in Michigan, as rules are now being imposed on international shipping to prevent shipping around. I saved several hundred dollars, and only now, 14 months later, are Canadian prices starting to catch up (down...) to what I paid for.

In my academic program, a lot of us used to buy our textbooks off amazon.com because the prices were cheaper than amazon.ca by about 30%. I actually bought a partial differential equations book off amazon.co.uk one time as I found theirs was the cheapest. Amazon.com cracked down on that, but that's all right. The latest trend is to buy soft cover versions off china or india which are 75-80% cheaper. It's the original english version with some of the other language on them. (University-level science is learnt in English almost everywhere).

[ 12 June 2007: Message edited by: 500_Apples ]

P.S. I'm moving this to the babble book lounge forum since this isn't about a national news story. Welcome, Rex. [img]smile.gif" border="0[/img]

CBC on Sunday night I think it was, did a short clip on the price differential between Canadian and American books and magazines. The only argument I remember clearly is that the US market is huge, while the Canadian market is much smaller, and prices reflect this. I think that argument is a bunch of hooey, by the way. I stopped buying magazines and books years ago because of this price difference. I read stuff for free on the web now, and I have a book collection. Otherwise, I watch TV.

[url=http://www.cbc.ca/arts/story/2006/05/16/book-prices.html]Expect book prices to fall as dollar rises, booksellers say[/url]

excerpt:

Book-pricing formula takes time to change

There's a fairly strict formula for book-pricing in Canada. It's the exchange rate plus roughly 10 per cent for handling costs, said Paul McNally, president of the Canadian Bookseller's Association and the co-owner of McNally Robinson Booksellers based in Winnipeg.

When the Canadian dollar took a nosedive in the 1990s, the Canadian price started to look substantially higher.

But the dollar is back up over 90 cents US, and customers are aware that the Canadian dollar price of books is not coming down.

"There was mumbling, there was murmuring, as the dollar rose towards 90 cents against the U.S. dollar," McNally said.

"But when it passed that benchmark, the mumbling turned into a crescendo."

McNally said he recently wrote to book publishers asking them to reduce prices to between 20 and 25 per cent above American list prices.

Publishing schedules, and details such as pricing, are determined months in advance, and can't change as quickly as the exchange rate, he said.

But by this fall, McNally said book prices should drop substantially.

Handling costs? profit?

Libraries, anyone? There's actually a very good rural library system in Ontario. Can't speak for other provinces or areas. I get my library to order me books from the provincial system because they rarely have what I want on the shelves. Might take up to two weeks. I read the book and then return it. For free. I flirt with the librarians and I've yet to have a late charge.

I also cruise the discard section at local libraries to build my personal collection. Hardcovers for fifty cents. Magazines for free, often. Old Canadian Geographics make for solid reading.

The last book I bought was online, and it was shipped to my door for 15 bucks Cdn, all done through the indie publisher.

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Originally posted by rexdog01:
[b]Has anyone noticed, that despite a thirty year high Canadian Dollar, that book prices are still 40%higher in Canada than the same book or Magazine in the USA. This is a massive rip-off. Who gets the windfall? Is it the publisher or the retailer? Certainly not the writers.[/b]

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Unquestionably the publisher. Canadian book stores are largely charged Canadian prices for books, regardless of the US price. The publishers convert the US price internally using whatever arcane methods they use, then tell us what it's going to be in Canada.

Also try to keep in mind that what is printed on the book is often not the Canadian *or* US price any longer. It's just what the price was at the time the book was first printed. The Oxford World's Classics are excellent examples of this. Some of those books were printed ten years ago. The US price you see on the cover is what the book cost, in US dollars, at that time. It has no bearing whatsoever on what book sellers paid for the book, nor what the book's "list price" is.

Books are one of the few unfortunate products whose prices are set by the publishers, not the book stores. While yes, a book store COULD opt to change the price, they do so either at risk of losing money or of pricing themselves out of the market - after all, every other book store on the planet is likely to be charging the publisher's "suggested retail price". We're quite hamstrung in this regard.

Charlotte