I went to Dymock's bookstore and took a zillion pictures of all the books in the romance section – which is separate from the paranormal romance section, interestingly enough – and of the sizes and prices of the books. When I got back to my hotel room, none of those pictures were on my camera. Where did they go? Is there some vortex that limits my ability to document the complete WTF that is Australian book prices? So went back again to take more, and funny enough I ended up with two sets of pictures. Oh, technology, you so weird.
Mind, the pictures of Louboutin shoes that I took earlier that day were all fine. My phone's camera has some very odd priorities that do not match my own. That said, the price extremity of Louboutin shoes vs. Australian paperback books are somewhat similar. Sticker shock might cause actual coronary emergencies in either case. So let's start with expensive shoes, one pair of which you could probably buy for the same price as all the books I'm about to show you.
Shoes or books? I pick books, every time.
Everywhere I see books, I see Fifty Shades and Bared to You – which has a different cover in Australia:
This is the other side of the pallet of 50 Shades & 50-shadesinalia. It was about waist high on me, and I'm 5'3″.
Mary Balogh's books are in what I was calling “hardback-lite” size. Nearly as big as a hardcover, but paperback. Also, the heroines are all half-headless.
Each hardback-lite sized Balogh novel was $22.99 each.
Romance had its own section, and if you look in the background on the right of “True Crime”, you'll see the Paranormal Romance section, which was larger, and separate.
Time to browse! Here's Jaci Burton's “The Heart of a Killer.” Guess the price!
Survey says? $12.99. That's a slightly-larger-than-mass-market-sized book, I think.
Stephanie Laurens shared an end-cap with Debbie Macomber, Christina Brooke, and Nora Roberts. These were all “hardback-lite” sized.
The Australian cover for The Lady Risks All.
The US cover looks like this, and is $7.99 in mass-market sized paperback:
If you'd like the Lady to Risk All in Australia, that'll be $24.99.
Lisa Kleypas' novels have very different covers, and are hardback-lite sized as well.
More Kleypas novels, with covers I would describe as “drippy.”
Ready to guess the price? $19.99 each.
Linda Lael Miller's Big Sky Mountain is a big ass book.
Whaddya know, the price is big, too!
Side-by-side comparison of the hardback-lite and mass-market size. Every so often I would find a US edition mass market on the shelf alongside all the jumbo books.
Three out of four Nora Roberts heroines agree: eyes are overrated.
The Donovan Legacy – 2 of Roberts' Donovan books – in hardback-lite size. Ready to guess how much?
Jill Sorenson's Crash Into Me (sorry for the glare) has an interesting cover.
This is one of three different covers I found for Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris:
Here are the other two covers, plus a bottle of Tru-blood drink:
The Anita Blake series has very interesting covers. Red frames around black and white images.
The covers for the Patricia Briggs' Alpha and Omega are very different in Oz. I don't recall Anna having a gun. Or two guns.
Two different covers for Michelle Rowan's Tall, Dark & Fangsome.
Here's one feature of some Australian books I really liked. This is the cover of Jeaniene Frost's Halfway to the Grave:
And check out the back: there's a checklist of features. A big red check (or “tick,” as the Aussies say) means it's really gothic and action-packed, and the smaller black check means it's funny, sexy and romantic, but less so than it is gothic and action-packed.
Magic Bites has a different cover (and I'm not crazy about the look that model is giving me):
It also has the checklist of attributes. This book is more action-packed and sexy than it is romantic, gothic, or funny. I wonder if those are the only attributes used to describe paranormal romance or urban fantasy?
This is the back of Magic Burns, another Kate Daniels book:
I kinda wish these descriptors were on some American books! They're pretty handy, though as I've thought about it I'm not sure how accurate they are.
One more comparison: Karen Marie Monings Shadowfever, with massmarket on the left, and hardback-lite on the right.
And here are the back covers, with prices – and, in one case, plot descriptors – for $9.95 and $17.99. I wonder if it's a feeling of “YES! SCORE!” when you find the mass market size of the same book for $8 less.
Do you like the checkmarks of plot descriptions on the back? Do you think they could be applied to other genres successfully – or are they not entirely accurate or enough of a description here? I'm sort of torn. I like the quick-glimpse, but having read some of the Daniels books, I'm not sure I 100% agree. And do these prices seem high to you, or is this normal where you live?
Geez, with these prices for new books, I imagine used book stores must do well!
I need to bookmark this post for the next time I whine about our U.S. prices/covers. 🙁
22.99?! Jesus, that makes my no-no hole pucker.
Australia has something called “parallel content” restrictions- which mean that if a publisher operating in Australia has the right to publish a book here, no one can import a copy from somewhere else. We often do get both the UK and American versions of books otherwise. I don’t know exactly how the restrictions work, other than that they periodically come up for discussion and the argument against disposing of them is that prices will go up.
This is of course horse-puckey- they removed similar cd restrictions a decade ago and prices dropped.
As an American who has spent a fair amount of time living in various countries and close to 2 decades in Australia- the prices made a lot more sense when the exchange rate was 50 cents to the US $- $20 for a paperback was the normal cost then too! And I found it really depressing that it was cheaper for me to buy English books in Japan then here (and they were more expensive than the local books). Basically the book trade here got used to a particular price point then failed to adjust when the exchange rate shifted. Actually most of the retail shops failed to adjust, which has led to many Australians buying large quantities from overseas and much woe from the local chains.
Ebooks do help- but they are still more expensive for Australian residents and are often highly restricted. Strangely enough there is a fair amount of digital piracy in Australia – tv, movies and books. No idea why….
One last thing- for “popular” authors, the solution is to buy books at Big W, Kmart or target – they are usually much cheaper than the book chains- so I saw there is a new Laurens book, I will not be paying more than $15 for one of the trade paperbacks. People do work around the prices. Good independent bookstores have done better than the chains, because they do pass the changed exchange rate benefits on.
And sadly, used book stores are dying here- but Brisbane does have the Southern hemisphere’s largest 2nd hand book event twice a year
Yep, scholarly texts are even worse; I’ve been on Bowkerlink looking at information on a monograph that sells for $40 in the U.S., and the Australian price is more like $100.
The other thing to keep in mind is that in Australia, a fairly hefty VAT is added to the cover price on books, but sales tax is not added to the US price. This does not account for all of the price difference, not by a long shot, but it is about a 20% add on.
We have an *OK* library system, and it varies from council to council.
I mean, we have some FANTASTIC libraries, but you can wait months (at my libraries at least) to get ‘new release’ titles in the library catalogue. Some are better than others, and… well I guess it’s the same all over? 🙂
The ‘hardback-lite’ as you named it (very cool name, which Australia should totally get on board with!) are called TPB (trade paperbacks) here. A book doesn’t really have a ‘hardback’ life in Australia. It’s too expensive. But you will find that some of your ‘big’ authors, such as Matthew Reilly, Bryce Courtney, etc will initially be released in hardback.
We also don’t really have a ‘cheap’ paperback (much like America does). They tried to introduce it about 10 years ago (they were slightly smaller from the normal paperback and produced on cheaper paper). The problem was they were only $2-4 dollars cheaper. For that money you might as well spend it to get the better quality book. So that died our pretty quickly (they were called PB A, while they ‘mass market’ you would have seen in the store is our PB B, the trade paperback or ‘hardback-lite’ can also be called TPB C… yeah).
You’ll find the number one reason behind the price difference between Australia and the US is one of people. There are 22 million people that live in Australia. There are over 300 million in the US. No matter how ‘popular’ a book in Australia is it will never ever sell anywhere near what a ‘popular’ book in the US will. The prices you see on Australian books is a price that (barely) has them making money.
I also find Australian publishing is extremely conservative for this reason. We don’t have great variety. The publishers can’t afford to take risks so they go with tried and true.
Australia lives in a different retail climate to the US. I don’t know if you noticed, but if you went into one of our department stores and went to by make-up, you would have seen that the prices were double (sometimes triple) the prices in the US.
This is VERY true. But the prices of our Australian books in Australia are the same as the US/CS/UK ones. I paid $25 for a new release trade paperback Melina Marchetta (AU author) novel the other day—the same as I’d pay for a new release trade paperback copy of… well, actually *more* than I’d pay for Laini Taylor’s (US author) new relase Trade Paperback Days of Blood and Starlight which is being advertised for $15 at the moment.
I’m *really* curious about how these laws actually do effect pricing. It’s *strange*
Of course, if a Canadian author (Michelle Sagara/Michelle West, Mary Balogh for example) is published by an American publisher, Canadians still have to pay higher prices than in the U.S.
It’s been a long time since I’ve purchased a print book in Australia, which is quite a feat, seeing as I live here.
But as Sarah has pointed out, the prices border on absurd.
If I buy a print book, it’s from the Book Depository. (Free postage is a huge attraction and the prices are usually 40-50% lower that Aussie prices.)
Ebooks are of course a huge attraction. They’re way cheaper than print.
But please, don’t be fooled into thinking we buy ebooks at the same price as the US, because we don’t.
Mainstream ebooks are priced differently (read: way higher) here than in the US, and all too often, they are “not available for purchase in Australia”.
BTW – thanks for posting the images of the Aussie book covers. Since all of my book purchases are now made online, and Borders has closed down, it’s been a while since I’ve spent time browsing through a bricks and mortar bookstore. I’m only familiar with the overseas covers. (Wow, that sounds really pathetic, doesn’t it?)
Now you understand why we almost tackled you to the ground when you brought free books for us! 😀
For the interested, here’s a summary of parallel import restrictions in Australia: http://bookthingo.com.au/paral…
It’s the reason why you see, for example, Anna Campbell or Stephanie Laurens titles in C-format (aka hardback-lite) instead of the cheaper A-format (aka mass market) foreign edition in most bookshops. Technically, readers must special-order the foreign edition.
Also GST is only 10%, not 20%.
I think a lot of the bricks & mortar romance-only shops such as Ever After also sell secondhand books. The only secondhand bookshop in Sydney dedicated to romance and sff books closed down earlier this year. Queensland has at least a couple with a good selection of romance titles.
I believe Australian booksellers consider Book Depository as a greater threat than Amazon at the moment. What most people don’t realise is that not only does TBD have the advantage of not being forced to sell C-format books or charging GST, the postage rate they pay is less than the postage for local booksellers. Bookseller+Publisher has an explanation of how the Royal Mail deal works here: http://www.fancygoods.com.au/e… Australia Post has said that it actually makes a loss with every TBD delivery.
This isn’t to say that readers shouldn’t find the best deal, price-wise (I do it all the time!) but in many cases the system works against the local industry, too, and if you talk to booksellers, especially the indies, many of them just as frustrated as the readers.
Now you understand our pain Sarah!
This is why when I buy paperback, mostly I buy from the Book Depository. And it’s why I love ebooks.
Hm, this could be why so many Oz bookstores have to close their doors – they’re pricing themselves out of the market. If only we could compare how many hardcopies are bought in Oz, vs how many are bought online and shipped in…
Feilding. Horrible little place with a very expensive library! I remember even the second-hand books being fairly expensive there compared to the UK.
Oh Dymocks, that brings back a lot of memories. I lived in New Zealand for three years and lived in Dymocks in Wellington. Though I didn’t buy a lot of books there, instead I got most of my reading material from libraries and the amazing sale bins in bookstores. I think it was W.H. Smith that had the best sale bins, books for US prices. That’s where I discovered Lindsey Davis’ Falco books and then caught up with them at the library.
I was in New Zealand when the last Harry Potter book came out and I bought it at the Dymocks in Wellington. I still have the purple reusable bag that it came in somewhere. I want to go back and I love the checkmarks on the books. That would be useful especially with romances and fantasy as I find they can be the worst for covers telling you what’s in the book.
Also GST is only 10%, not 20%.
…Interesting. I’m a Harlequin author, and the cover prices that Harlequin quotes in my royalty statements for the book are 20% lower than the price listed on the cover. They claimed the difference was VAT, which I don’t get paid royalties on.
So. Yeah. That falls in the category of “interesting.”
When I lived in New Zealand a number of years ago, there was a cost to take out best sellers at the Dunedin library in the South Island. I remember this because I paid five dollars to read The Da Vinci Code and it was a complete waste of my money. Though I never came across that at the Wellington Public Library, it might be a way to support buying books, but I never found out why.
One thing that helped was that Australia doesn’t seem to have the front cover returns system the USA does, so unsold books were sent to remainder stores where they were usually 1/4 the price that the bookstore charged.
Provided one was willing to wait (and I got to the point where I knew the timeframe that applied) you could pick up newish books for much less. I think I got a nice trade pb of carl hiassen’s Sick Puppy for $4.99 about 6 months after it was released(would have been $22 or so then) and that made me realise what options were available.
They weren’t comprehensive, and you did have to know what they specialised in, but it did make a lot of book purchases possible.
There seem to be significantly less of these now than there were a decade ago though, so it is online ordering and ebooks for me.
And the library system is ok, but they have a nasty habit of selling off their older (3 years old) books so that you have the second half of a series availalble but not the first book.
One of the reasons retail in Australia is so expensive is that the importing wholesalers charge a higher price than is charged retail overseas. That includes the manufacturers as well. So while there are factors driving up the price of some things,one of the main factors is a very high profit margin for the manufacturer/retailer and an acceptance by the big chains. A standard kitchen aid mixer costs $750! I have been eying one off for the last 5 years, and yet cannot bring myself to reward the bloodsucking importers
I’m an Australian but one of the things I have found -thanks to one of my dear friends- is a specialty romance bookstore in Melbourne that imports direct from the US, so same price as everywhere else but they get it in time for the American release dates, and if I’m lucky they sometimes have it a couple of days before the release; and so for example I once got a copy of one of the Ilona Andrews books a few days early.
I have also received emails from them that contain a photo of a newly opened box revealing the latest Nalini Singh novel to tell me it’s in, which of course made me so incredibly happy.
I have also never seen that checklist thing on a romance novel in Melbourne.
Prices seem so high. I’m surprised people don’t boycott.
a big factor in books being cheaper in the US and UK than in Australia is we don’t print out quite the same amount of copies, therefore pushing the publishing price per unit up. Population-wise, the US has 314,731000 according to latest statistics, UK has 62,262000, and Australia has 22,805832. So a big print run over here is nowhere near what it is for the US or the UK, and the US, and we don’t have the same high percentage of published books being pulped every year as the US, which I believe is approx 40%. So we pay high prices for a) still having a publishing industry in this country, and b) we don’t kill as many trees to get that lower per unit price.
Another Kiwi here and I can definately tell you that books are even more expensive here, mostly to do with the exchange rate, but also the extra distance of shipping and the fact that we have very limited almost monopolies controlling the bookselling in NZ.
I started buying off Amazon back when we got Internet in 1997 and switched to Book Depository a few years ago. I allow myself about $100 every 6 months to get the books I *must* have in print, usually HB for the latest editions, but yes I have a Kindle and loving it to bits (but HATE HATE HATING the stupid region restrictions publishers put on them – I can buy the print version in the shop, why can’t I get the ebook????)
We do have a pretty good library system in NZ, its free to join and generally free to borrow. I reserve a lot of new releases and they cost me $2 a book and they also offer Best Sellers you can have for $5 for a week as another option. They are also good about ordering stuff in, esp if its series and my local library has a really good selection of SF and Fantasy and urban paranormal stuff because a few of the librarians read it.
It totally sucks how expensive books are, reference books are HORRENDOUS – I enquired of a local specialty bookstore for a torchon lace book and they quoted around $90 and I got the same book from BD for about $25. And it gets worse!
Thankyou for highlighting the plight of overly expensive books here in the Outer Reaches of Here Be Dragons!
Ohana, that is VERY interesting. It’s definitely called GST (Goods and Services Tax) on Au, and it’s 10% AND it’s included in the cover price—all the stickers SB Sarah listed included tax. I’m… Mmmmmm. Very VERY interesting :S
And yet, Australians are the highest per capita consumers of books in the English speaking world.
http://www.bookmarket.com/stat…
I still wish books were cheaper but have become accustomed to their price.
My local romance bookstore in Sydney also direct orders from the US. So it’s a real pleasure to go in there and have a chat about what’s new, what we’ve been reading etc. I really prefer to buy books in this genre because I enjoy lending them to friends and vice versa. If I had to pay the sticker prices shown in the photos, I’d never buy any.
I agree with Damon. I do wish the prices were cheaper – thank goodness for digital editions now! – but I’ve grown accustomed to the steep cost of my beloved books. I figure that if my only real vice is an abundance of reading material, then so be it.
There is no VAT in Australia, the sticker price quoted includes all taxes (10%GST).
I’m Australian but lived in the US for several years, then I moved home and haven’t shopped in Aus for anything other than food or electrical items since! I can’t bring myself to pay triple the price I know an item can be bought for in the US. If only I could find a way to combine American shopping with Australian food….
I hope Australians earn a lot of money to buy those books…and here I thought Half Price Books stores were sometimes expensive…and with prices like that, it’s really discouraging to have books and reading as a hobby.
http://sveta-randomblog.blogsp…
The population thing is indeed a big factor, and it’s worse in NZ as we only have population of just over 4 million.
Someone mentioned boycotting – I guess that’s what we are doing, those of us that buy ebooks and from Book Depository. I hadn’t thought of it that way as I was just maximising the number of books I can buy for the budget I have.
Taxes in Canada vary by province ….
for example 5 provinces have the new HST (Harmonized Sales Tax) and it ranges from 8% to 15% …13% in Ontario
Many of the other provinces have GST and PST…making a combined sales tax of between 7% to 14.5%
All books shipping to a Canadian address are subject to GST (Goods and Services Tax) but are NOT charged PST (Provincial Sales Tax).
“No PST” is applicable to educational audio books only.
GST is now 5% for books.
This also adds to the price especially if there is a delivery charge…the tax is once again added to the delivery
for example: $20 book + $5 shipping + GST =
I find the price with The Book Depository a better deal-usually the book is less expensive and there is NO delivery charge or sales tax. The only problem is the time. But if I really want or need a book…ebook is the way to go.
Again…there is sales tax applied to all ebooks ordered from Canadian sites..e.g. Chapters/Indigo (KOBO) or Amazon.ca.
Seriously expensive! And isn’t the “hardback lite” size paperback called a “trade paperback”? Even with taxes included, some of those are still 3x the US price. Insane!
Back when we had our Used bookstore one of our best customers was a man from Australia. He would raid our MMPB section and ship the books back to Australia via boat. I think he then sold them to used bookstores in Australia. We always gave him a good deal and I think they were selling them used for the US cover price. Even with the shipping costs I think he was making good profits. I think the high price of the Aussie books was one reason he did this, but I think it was also because our selection of titles and authors is better here.
Here are some prices in Canada==e.g. The Mark of Athena
THE MARK OF ATHENA by Rick Riordan
Hard Cover Copy
Costco Canada: $11.99
Chapters: $19.99
Independent: $19.99
Amazon.ca: $14.43 plus delivery (minimum $5.00 unless free shipping with a minimum of $25 order)
The Book Depository UK: $18.00 Canadian
KOBO (Chapters ebook): $12.99
US PRICES
Amazon.com: $10.98 plus delivery
Books a Million: $10.99 plus delivery
Interesting Info: for BAM to ship to Canada $4.00 per order PLUS $13.99 per item
In Ontario the full HST (13%) applies to ebooks, but it does not apply to print books. Only the old GST portion (5%) applies to print books. This is what makes agency pricing even worse here. Also, our HST/GST is not included in the sticker price of a book – it is added on at the time of purchase.
Of course, none of this compares with the prices Aussies and Kiwis have to pay for books. If we had to pay those prices, our bookstores would likely have closed long ago.
I seriously wonder if it would be more cost effective to send my cousin a new ereader every few months with all the books she wants loaded onto it than to have her pay the prices they charge for books in Australia. I understand what drives the price up of physical books but some of the prices they want for ebooks are crazy and geographic restrictions don’t make as much sense as language editions when you are talking about digital books so that is just another example of the publishing industry lagging behind actual market needs, once again.
I get you on the shipping, it’s really a killer once you venture out of US and Canada. That’s why I’ve sworn eternal love to Book Depository, sometimes I even rather buy the books in pounds because the currency we have now is like 13.4 pesos to the dollar. Totally insane.
I get you on the shipping, it’s really a killer once you venture out of US and Canada. That’s why I’ve sworn eternal love to Book Depository, sometimes I even rather buy the books in pounds because the currency we have now is like 13.4 pesos to the dollar. Totally insane.
I’m in New Zealand and these seem pretty average. Books are insanely expensive Downunder, because of shipping I think.
I’m in NZ too, and book prices are horrific. I used to work at a book store, and even with staff discount it was way cheaper to buy them off the internet (which I felt terrible about, but was necessary as a poor student). I can save over $100 per book sometimes by buying my medical textbooks off bookdepository instead of at the university bookshop, which I obviously do, but I think is really sad.