Books are not too expensive • Hacker News Board

Re: Books are not too expensive

#91

Post by paganel » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 1:17 PM UTC

rtpg wrote: post #32

Japan and France to me stand out as places where pop culture-y books are really fairly priced. And both of these are places where there are established printing formats that don't try to make the books huge. Walking around in an Australian bookstore at least I am still a bit flabbergasted by how everything is printed to be huge, everything a slightly different size, lots of paperbacks with glossy covers etc. Not that…

I can confirm that French paperbacks are in a league of their own, my almost weekly purchases at the French bookstore here in Bucharest are a example of that (never visited Japan, but a French friend of mine who’s also a book rat and who staid in Tokyo for about a year told me about the same you’re saying about them). On the other hand I could never understand the Anglos’ infatuation with a book not being serious enough if it’s not hardback, maybe a reflection of their castle-owning days, when one had enough space to store them. I’m kidding, but only by half.

I’d also want to show my appreciation for Italian publishers, for some of them, at least, the quality of their some of their books can be quite high (Laterza and Einaudi from the top of my head, but there are others, too).

Re: Books are not too expensive

#92

Post by mhb » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 1:25 PM UTC

JKCalhoun wrote: post #82

eBooks (ePubs) are too expensive. I assumed (naively) that the electronic version would be the cost of the pulp version minus the cost of the pulp and printing and also minus the cost of shipping. Author, publisher, editor still get their same cut. In fact with DRM, the price should even be less that the above since there are no used-book sales lost.

Also minus the cost of the unsold copies.

Re: Books are not too expensive

#93

Post by selimthegrim » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 1:38 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #76

odo1242 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had one professor in college who made most of their money by forcing students to buy his book (it was an ebook so it couldn’t be resold, and also super expensive, and the class homework was all linked to from the book itself). The class was also somewhat useless, which lead to a lot of students surmising that the professor’s deal was basically just = free A / course requirement lol

> I had one professor in college who made most of their money by forcing students to buy his book This is a return to the original model of a university, where professors made their money from the course fees students paid to take their courses. It's an improvement over what we have now.

Are you sure about that?

Re: Books are not too expensive

#94

Post by buu709 » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 1:45 PM UTC

CodesInChaos wrote: post #66

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #5

At some point you just have to move to Ebooks. It's way cheaper (usually ~6x cheaper) and it's much more convenient, as you always have your entire library with you. Sometimes even in duplicate, i.e. on more than one device at the same time, in the same place. I was very reluctant to make the move at first, as I love everything about physical books -- their feel, the way they smell, the cover art -- but I was accumul…

Where do you find e-books that are several times cheaper than paperback? Sometimes they're half the price, but often they aren't cheaper at all. And that assumes you find a DRM free copy at all.

Ebooks go on sale a lot. You can often get them for less than $3.00, but it takes effort to track what you like and keep an eye out for sales. The trade off wasn't worth it for me years ago and I paid full price for what I wanted to read... lately there are very few books I pay full price for.

Re: Books are not too expensive

#95

Post by f0urO4 » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 1:48 PM UTC

Yall know ebay exists right? Clearly the majority of humans would rather buy items that are pre-owned instead of new. To kill a mocking bird is 4.39 free shipping. Books along with alot of other things are not rare commodities, there quiet the opposite. Book resellers struggle to sell books infact many book sellers have the hardest time reselling these heavy paper things with words on it because theres to many of them online! Buy pre-owned you wont know the difference and sometimes the difference is cheaper.

Re: Books are not too expensive

#96

Post by nelsonic » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 2:04 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #89

WaitWaitWha wrote: post #36

To be fair, this article is partially true. Now, allow me to pour some gasoline/petrol/benzine around this thread. Have you purchased a college course required book recently? There is a market monopoly by Pearson, Wiley,Cengage, and McGraw. Buy the eBook, or the actual book with a CD in the back, but cannot access the pictures because the code can be use only once ! (often the codes do not work at all) Updated every…

Where I studied in the UK the university provided all books. Which meant they had a lot more negotiating power, because they wouldn't pay £300 a book nor allow a professor to have a £300 book as a requirement for the course. So companies had to make sure their material was within the price range that universities were willing to pay for it.

where did you study? and is it still like that?

Re: Books are not too expensive

#97

Post by indigodaddy » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 2:22 PM UTC

greenie_beans wrote: post #86

indigodaddy wrote: post #34

eBay->title search->sort price low to high-> usually results in under $5 free shipping for almost any oldish book. Also for some reason the sellers on eBay are almost always cheaper (sometimes significantly) than their Alibris/Abe/Amazon storefront counterparts. Same with Thriftbooks, cheaper on their eBay storefront than direct, especially since TB raised their free shipping minimum...

bookfinder.com is what you're looking for

I used to use addall.com, but that doesn't capture eBay nor Thriftbooks anymore both of which are always cheaper than youll find from addall results

Re: Books are not too expensive

#98

Post by dyauspitr » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 2:28 PM UTC

ivansavz wrote: post #59

WaitWaitWha wrote: post #36

To be fair, this article is partially true. Now, allow me to pour some gasoline/petrol/benzine around this thread. Have you purchased a college course required book recently? There is a market monopoly by Pearson, Wiley,Cengage, and McGraw. Buy the eBook, or the actual book with a CD in the back, but cannot access the pictures because the code can be use only once ! (often the codes do not work at all) Updated every…

Yeah the textbook cartel is outrageous. I started a textbook publishing company to fight this! I was working on web copy describing how crazy the mainstream textbook prices are, and used the price C$300 for the calculus book, trying to be flippant (to exaggerate the competitor price to make my prices look better). I decided to check the price in the bookstore, and to my surprise the price was even higher than that! (…

Well someone sat down and wrote a 1000 dense pages that probably took 2-5 years of their life. That deserves to be rewarded. Of course there are problems with professors prescribing their own books for the class etc. but when I went to school you could return that $300 book for $200 to the bookstore once the semester was done.

Re: Books are not too expensive

#99

Post by VoodooJuJu » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 2:31 PM UTC

randusername wrote: post #84

It's nice to own books. Read them multiple times, dog-ear the pages, scribble in the margins, risk reading them in the pool. But for the price conscious general reader just inter-library loan. If you want to buy To Kill A Mockingbird or The Hobbit be my guest, but any library in the US would have a few copies of those. Public libraries are awesome. Use it or lose it.

[dead]

Re: Books are not too expensive

#100

Post by quentindanjou » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 2:32 PM UTC

Hard disagree.

The article contradicts itself when you verify it.

Tolkien's Fellowship was $7 in 2000 using the given inflation calculator it would be $13 today (not more than $50 as mentioned in the article??? They probably set the date at over 50 years ago) todays edition of the book is $20 (not the $13 it should have been with inflation) and the hardcover version is at $30.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-fellowship-of-the-ring-...

> Don’t blame books for being too expensive. Everything else is more expensive, and that’s why you can’t afford books.

Books became more expensive as everything else.