A Terrible Confession

Once again an Editorial Ass post strikes fear in me. This time, however, I am worried that the publishing industry will heed her usually spot-on rallying cry, not ignore it. She lists a few ideas for making publishing profitable and thus not, as a commenter had suggested, worthy of dying a justifiable death. Her second suggestion (raise prices), however, got my hackles up, and leads now to a terrible confession and the first of what I intend to be a string of Ideas for Saving (or Improving in Some Small Way) the Industry We Call Publishing. Here goes: I was planning on keeping this private and certainly never telling anyone who might care about books, but in the interest of making a point, I feel I must. Plus, Dingbat isn't my real name, so I don't feel any real danger. I buy used books. I buy on sale remainders. I shop at discount book stores. Constantly filled with worry though I am about the plight of publishers, I, a book person, seek in my book-buying practices to deprive them of every possible ounce of profit. Same goes with book stores. Just this weekend I bought pounds and pounds of books at a library sale for about a dollar a piece. I believe the last time I bought a full price book in a full price store was in May (Etgar Keret's The Girl on the Fridge), just because I was out of sorts and wanted something right then. So there it is. Why do I do this? Because it is not unusual for a trade paperback to cost $18. More often it is around $15. If I want to buy four books, which doesn't seem like many, I am up to $60, plus tax. That's serious money. And Editorial Ass thinks it should be more. My Idea, on the contrary, is a very simple one: lower prices. I am not sure how practicable this is. $15 for a lot of paper seems a little much, but I know there is a lot involved in making a book. And maybe the problem is less critical than it seems to me, consuming books as I do at a much higher rate than the average book store customer. Maybe I'm like that family with 18 kids who has to make their own soap because $2 a bar becomes a lot when you have that many showers to take. Still, I think the current price is dangerously close to the absolute cap for what people consider reasonable for a paperback book, and if there's any way to lower the price without catastrophic effects on profits, it needs to be done. This seems like an obvious move so I assume there are roadblocks at present. I would hate to see my pretty paperbacks suffer design-wise, but maybe there's a happy medium between those pulpy, yellowing mass market versions and their upright, smooth trade brethren. Or maybe it's a matter of fixing other policies that lower profits and lead to the need for higher prices on what does get sold. I don't know. But I would love to shop in a legit bookstore and support publishers with pride, so I hope something changes.