Something else to consider is that the retail price doesn't
mean a hell of a lot these days. Fewer and fewer customers
expect to pay full price for a book, so much so that there's
a lot of talk about removing the retail price
altogether.
Al
----- Original Message -----
From: jacquesdebierue
To:
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, October 13, 2007 9:45 PM
Subject: Re: RARA-AVIS: Digest Number 1666
--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, Patrick King
<abrasax93@...> wrote:
>
> Okey. So by this calculation, a 35 cent book in
1960
> should cost about $2.25 today. The trick is, no
such
> books exist. What's up with that?
If you do it with the price of houses, you will
find a similar
phenomenon... The general index doesn't tell you
how particular things
appreciate. I recall reading a similar comparison
with movie tickets,
which is a more appropriate comparison since
tickets and books belong
to the same category (popular entertainment).
Also, the important
factor is not how prices have risen but how the
purchasing power has
changed. For example, how many Gold Medals could
the average guy buy
in 1960 vs. today, what multiple of average (or
median) family income
buys an average (or median) house, etc. Price by
itself doesn't tell
the whole story. Even with food, the comparison
can be faulty if the
diet has changed... and entire categories of
products exist now that
didn't exist back then. It's not so easy.
Mind you, I do support the $2.25 paperback, but
only Dover offers
those and the books are out of copyright.
Best,
mrt
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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