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?
So far as I know, libraries only charges on borrows of selected new releases—the main stand I see at my small local libraries in Auckland indicates a charge of about $5 (I think that’s right) for a new release hardback. That said, I’m often high on the waiting list for new releases and I haven’t yet been charged for any of the ones I’ve borrowed. Not sure of the how or why on the charges. Maybe it doesn’t apply if you’re ordering them electronically? Must ask next time I go in. And check with my in-laws in Palmerston North, too.
Oh, I LOVED Busy Bee when I last visited Wellington. I came out with a huge bag full of used books, including a stack of Georgette Heyers…. because I was so gutted about not being able to purchase the discounted eBook re-releases at ARe and Sourcebooks due to those heinous regional restrictions.
Maree – as I understand it, the charges are if you want to jump the queue and take them off the shelf right away. If you request them in the normal order of things, you just go through the queue and get them when you get the top.
I’m Australian, and I rarely buy a book here. I get them from Amazon who think I live in Oregon (I have Amazon prime), other ebooksellers in the US or from bookdepository. I did buy a book published here a couple of years ago, and haven’t recovered yet. Every now and then I glare at it and think “that cost me $27.99!”
Books are an extreme example – but most of our retail goods have been overpriced for a long time. More and more of us are buying stuff on the net now for that very reason.
We have some sort of protectionism going on down here, hence the high prices. The Government was on about changing it buy publishers and authors got upset. I don’t get it. I’m an author but I refuse to buy books from stores down here in South Australia. I buy them online or with my Kindle. If I travel to the US I travel with an empty suitcase to fill with books. If only you could bring Corona home in your suitcase as well!
Someone mentioned to me the price of books is higher but we pay our staff more. Was surprised and sad to hear how little shop staff get paid in the States. Can it be true people work for less than $10 per hour? I think even juniors here get about $14 and uni students usually want and get about $20 per hour for menial jobs. Pls correct me if these figures are wrong,
These prices are about the same as what we pay in South Africa. Which is why I bought a kindle*. Even a new Nora Roberts at $17 is still about R50 cheaper (about $6) than I would be able to get it in a book store. A big added bonus is that I also have much faster wider access to books with the kindle. It can take a few months for new American releases to make it into South African book stores.
*Ok, lets be honest: I had to choose between buying another bookshelf and buying a kindle and I simply did not have space for another book shelf.
Possibly, I am in Australia and my Uni textbooks ranged from $95-$120 each. 8->
I’m in Australia (the lowest point being Tasmania) and we have 1 major bookstore and the rest are small family owned stores. I find that paperbacks are huge and expensive and at the rate I read I would need to own a library just to house the books I bought. I got a kindle a little over a year ago and have over 400 read books on it. Not only are the books better in price but I have all the space I need for them.
I’m Australian and buy my books from thebookdepository. Otherwise I may last minute buy a book at Dymocks. They also have a member’s card and it’s a pretty good points system. But, of course, you need to buy the books first.
Small world! I’m a Yank who used to shop at Dawn Treader in AA, now living near PN in NZ. We live rural, not in PN, so we have to pay to use the Palmy public library—I think it’s $2 for an ‘old’ book and $5 for a new release? Can’t remember as I’ve never availed myself of the offer.
But yes books are ungodly expensive here, though the cover price does include NZ’s 15% sales tax/GST. It’s why I have an ereader and buy almost exclusively ebooks from the US now.
Hey… you all have a great basis for a used book online trade…. here in the USA there’s paperbackswap where you list books online and for every one requested and mailed from you – your account receives one credit… which allows you to request one book.. essentially, you get a used book for the price of mailing one… I’m sure it’s trade marked etc…. but an interesting idea for those of you who want to swap some books…
I live in a non-English speaking country in Europe and the book prices are also insanely high. Also, the editors only release mass-marked paperbacks. No pocket-sized paperbacks or hardbacks.
You’d probably think “Oh the book prices are high in your country because they have to translate them!” but it’s not so. Even books written in our own language are the exact same price.
You can’t buy any book here for less than €18. It doesn’t matter if the writer is a nobody or a super popular one. Even the worst romance novel ever written would have the same price as the best ones.
This is why I stopped buying books in local bookstores. For the past 5 years I’ve ordered my books online through TheBookDepository. I can buy 4 books there for the price of 1 in a bookstore.
Of course, that means that everything I read is in English, but it doesn’t make any difference to me. Plus, the people who translate books in my country must be insane (or maybe forged their diplomas) because the translations are SO BAD it’s ridiculous. It’s another reason why it’s hard to pay so much for a poorly-translated book.
I’m from Chile, and I’ve practically stopped buying books new. Why?
1) New releases are only from the top of the bestseller list (There are like 50 copies of every 50 Shades book, but not a single Loretta Chase book),
2) Cost is between US$27 and US$41.
3) My favorites are Speculative Fiction and Romance, and the only way too know if they are good is to read at least 20 pages in, and bookstore people look at me in a seriously weird way when I do that (Okay, so they look at me weird from the moment I start laughing at the books on display, but I dare you NOT to laugh reading the back reviews of 50 shades). And there’s so little market for them that a book that costs US$16 goes up to US$47 in translation.
4) One bookstore has started importing books from the US, which means I see how much extra is added to books. With ASOIAF, the books in english where US$19. Spanish translations were US$43.
5) In each bookstore, there is one person who actually knows books, and that I have to avoid like the plague whenever I have cash. The rest? I know the titles they are selling better than them. I don’t mind “Sense & Sensibility & Sea Monsters” on the classic section, but they have no idea what half of their main display is about.
6) There’s no discount rack. I didn’t even know discount racks existed until I visited the NYC’s Barnes & Nobles and had to be physically dragged away from the place. Since then, I’ve discovered that they do “unload extra” elsewhere, but there are no fixed dates about that.
7) The next bookseller that tells me that Dan Brown is worth buying at fully inflated price is getting a really long diatribe about why, even though his books are entretaining, I’d rather the tree was still planted.
Used bookstores, on the other hand, let me read on site, always offer discounts if I’m buying over three books, tend to have some notion of what they sell, and prices are decent to begin with. And then there’s the variety.
These are typical prices for Australia across the board.
That’s why I have a kindle or order books online.
I live in Sydney & love the George St Dymocks (almost as much as I love Kinokunya – did you get there? It’s just up the road), but I very rarely buy books from bookstores anymore, a) because of the price and b) because of he limited range – especially in children’s books.
I teach year1 (first grade) and tend to buy most of my books from the book depository because I can always find books that match the units of work we’re studying. It’s actually almost impossible to find quality non-fiction children’s books anywhere in a mainstream bookstore here.
Continued from my previous comment. Sorry, Comment box froze…
I buy most of my personal books as e readers because of the pricing unless its part of a series I already have on my shelf. I feel bad when I hear about stores like Borders closing and Angus & Robertson restructuring but… I can’t afford their prices (I can buy children’s books on the BD or $3-$4 compared to $10-15 in a bookstore and I tend to need to buy about 10-15books for each unit I teach!) and they just don’t sell what I need.
What bothers most Canadians is the US price vs. the Canadian price. Our $ is worth more than th USD and we pay more for the book!!? Even when the $ is at par, we still have a Cdn. price listed.
Something is rotten in the state of publishing
As an aussie i tend to buy my books at book depository. There’s alws in Australia to “protect” the publishing industry hence why the prices are set so high; but it seriously backfires.
I’m in Palmy right now! The prices at stores are accurate, and to check out a new book it’s about $3, I think? Enough for me to wait. Putting them on hold is $1 (I figure, I’m a student not paying any taxes, so a small fine is fair). No way I’d buy anything, though. Don’t get me started on textbooks- I carry about 20lbs of books in at the start of every semester, and save about $200-300 doing that.
What kind of an ereader does she have/would you buy? Because it might be an idea to get a Sony (or another reader) with the ability to use SD cards/some kind of memory thingie and then just mail new SD cards/memory thingies… Those are fairly cheap (at least here) and if you have two, your cousin could mail the “used” one back empty and you could “refill” it…
Prices for books in Australia are mostly about the costs of printing and distribution and economies of scale. Physical size of Australia is similar to the US but the population is 20 million versus the US’s 300 million. I know they seem ridiculous, but this is the cost of keeping books on the shelves with a sale or return model!
I’ve never used the Amazon ebook lending feature—can the books be loaned internationally? I know there are some FB lending groups, so maybe the Down Under readers could take advantage of that?
This is something I’ve thought of possibly starting (at least informally among friends), but posting one mass market single title would cost $6.50—sometimes you can get brand new releases for cheaper from TBD. So the only way I can see a postage-based used book system working is to obtain specific out-of-print titles, and I’m just not sure we’d have enough of a critical mass to even get that off the ground.
And yet Australians are massive book fans & do indeed buy loads of books. Mind you with Book Depository and free postage things are changing.
And this is why I borrow from the library and buy from the Book Depository. Apologies to independent Australian booksellers, but I can’t afford you.
Not to mention I HATE the ‘hardcover-lite’ size. They might as well bill them as large-print. Complete waste of paper and money. Mass-market is indeed a score if you can find them.
Funny you should mention that. Australia does have an amazing public library system. I read websites like this for reviews, then log onto the local library site and reserve the book I want. More often than not it’s available or I might have to wait a bit. As far as book prices go, yeah, it’s ridiculously expensive down here.
Our libraries are fab. I would like to buy more books though and I’d like to support the local booksellers rather than buying from OS but who can afford that? The only time I buy books locally is when (for some reason) I’m buying someone a gift
Yes, books here in Australia are expensive, but you can get better prices if you know where to go. Dymocks is always pretty expensive, as was Borders when we had it and Angus and Robertson. QBD is much cheaper, although can still be quite high depending on what it is – for example, the Avon romances I devour are $12.99-$15.95, which is crap compared to the US $7.99, but still better than most other places.
Everything Harlequin/Mills & Boon can be bought from a Target for roughly 20% below RRP, from a K-Mart for 35% below RRP and from a Big W for 40% below RRP. K-Mart and Big W are also the way to go for new releases from Australian authors (as they have a 25%-35% discount from RRP) as well as new releases from worldwide authors such as Patricia Cornwall, James Patterson, Stephen King etc. It’s painful, but when it comes to books I’m determined to get the best price lol.