How Much Have Book Prices Increased Since 2019?

Kelly is a former librarian and a long-time blogger at STACKED. She’s the editor/creator of (DON’T) CALL ME CRAZY: 33 VOICES START THE CONVERSATION ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH and the editor/creator of HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD. Her subsequent guide, BODY TALK, will publish in Fall 2020. Follow her on Instagram @heykellyjensen.

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Several occasions whereas writer catalogs or on guide retailer websites, I’ve discovered myself pausing and questioning if I used to be studying the value appropriately. YA paperback releases at the moment are coming in at virtually $16 a pop from some publishers, and a couple of current YA hardcover got here with a $25 price ticket. One of the various causes YA grew to become so widespread a decade in the past was as a result of its value level was extra accessible than comparable titles printed for adults: you’d anticipate paying between $10 and $12 for a paperback and between $16 and $18 for a hardcover, versus $16 to $18 for an grownup paperback (that was not mass market) and someplace between $25 and $27 for hardcover.

To say there’s been sticker shock this yr could be an understatement.

It isn’t any secret that the fee to provide books has gone up. In 2018, a deep dive into the paper disaster for publishers urged costs may want to extend to accommodate this. But it’s not simply the price of the provides which have gone up. So, too, have prices related to the staffing that retains publishing going. How a lot is unknown, given how little open dialogue of wage occurs within the publishing world.

What we are able to know is that these doing the work on the backside of the publishing homes–the editorial workers, the advertising and publicity workers, copy editors, and the remainder who’ve their arms on the books themselves–definitely aren’t making sufficient cash for the work they do nor the requirement they typically have of dwelling in one of the vital costly cities within the nation. This is, in fact, why the HarperCollins Union went on strike final yr. They had been in a position to negotiate a beginning wage for incoming workers to $50,000, which is simply above a dwelling wage for a single working grownup in New York City (that clocks in at about $46,800). We additionally know that the authors themselves haven’t seen any significant improve in what they earn as an advance. It’s most likely uncertain that guide value will increase have made any significant distinction to those that create the product or deliver it into its last type.

Let’s get again to the query at hand, although. Have guide costs really elevated or is all of it a notion, given the fee will increase in each different space of life?

To discover out, I’ve crunched some numbers.

First, a methodological notice. It is unattainable to search out a mean value of each guide printed by each writer. Initially, I believed to take a look at the highest tier authors at each writer and take a look at the will increase in the price of these books over a 5 yr interval. While most of these large authors printed a brand new title yearly, not all did. That made consistency tough. It was additionally not the most effective illustration of an array of publishers, every of whom has a distinct pricing scheme. Instead, I pulled the highest 10 titles from Publisher’s Weekly’s Adult Fiction Hardcover Bestseller List in fiction for the previous 5 years. I used a mid-August record date to maintain the information constant, as it’s unlikely we’d see a value change in the midst of the yr. It additionally ensured a variety of publishers had been represented within the information.

Each of these titles was dropped right into a spreadsheet, after which I appeared up the duvet value of the guide. There was no rounding right here: if a guide was $29.99, that’s the quantity added. Every single guide on this record was straightforward to discover a cowl value for by way of Amazon.

screenshot of a spreadsheet with the costs of the top 10 books from publishers weekly bestseller lists and their costs beside them.

In the picture above, the yellow bar signifies the common value of a hardcover guide. Indeed, the price of hardcover books has gone up incrementally yearly since 2018–you might count on to pay slightly over $28 for a hardcover then and now, you may count on to spend slightly over $30. That is a 7.7% improve.

If you’re trying on the above and questioning what’s occurring in 2021, when the common value went down, that’s fairly simply defined: a hardcover manga title was on the highest ten bestsellers that week. Those are typically slightly bit cheaper than the standard narrative fiction. Even eradicating that title, although, the common for 2020 was $27.90.

So sure, guide costs have gone up. It’s been a sluggish motion, however it’s there.

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