Friday, May 15, 2009
Pricing of Continuum books UK vs US
Jim West comments on the high price of books in the Library of New Testament Studies series, with Michael Pahl's Discerning the "Word of the Lord" @ $120 in the USA. My role as series editor does not stretch to budgetary matters, but I have to agree that this does seem very expensive, and there is an anomaly in that the US price is substantially more than the UK price, £60, which is about $91 at the current exchange rate. So it would of course be cheaper to buy it from the UK, even with the extra postage and packing. Of course it is expensive to produce academic books with a limited print run, but I will talk to the people at Continuum about the current pricing policy to see if there are ways that we can help individual scholars to bear the cost, rather as -- in days of old -- there were special reductions for individual scholars who wished to buy volumes in the series.
Academic books are insanely pricey sometimes, but it is all about the cost-benefit analysis of the publishing company. I've found some academic books for $50, even on Amazon.com, which leaves me and my budget gasping for air. One question though, and feel free to ignore it if you prefer not to answer, but how much does the academic gain in royalties from the publishing of these books?
ReplyDeleteAlfredo: it varies a lot. Often there will be no royalty for a first book, especially if it is that author's PhD dissertation.
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