Date: Fri, 06 Dec 2002 09:20:04 -0500
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
From: "Barry L. Newton" <bnewton at ashcomp.com>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Book Prices
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

Interestingly, ronkean at juno.com said:
>That is an interesting discussion of the economics of book pricing.  I
>have a much simpler (probably overly simple) model to explain the retail
>pricing of new books.  That is that books are usually priced to sell at
>retail at about the same as what it would cost a consumer to photocopy
>the book.  Then, given that it is clearly better in terms of quality and
>convenience for the consumer to pay $15 for a 200 page factory bound book
>than to pay $15 to xerox the same book borrowed from a library or from a
>friend, the publisher is assured that practically no consumer will try to
>make a bootleg copy by photocopying.

Two thoughts on photocopying:  firstly, your case is even stronger because
most commercial shops want at least a dime a page for copies, where it's
not $0.15.  So the 200 page book would be at least $20.00 to copy.  On the
other hand, most people copying something that large for personal use tend
to steal the service from their employers, making the cost to them $0.

Barry