To think there’s no hope anymore financially after seeing the price of this…?!

[Suteleynot]

I’ve just been browsing the new books due to be released next year. Hardbacks are now 22 pounds????!!!

I know hardbacks have always been pricey especially when new but I am almost certain they were around 14-15 pounds only recently.

I have quite a bit of disposable income and I love reading but I cannot for a moment get my head around how expensive this is? It won’t be long before a new hardback will cost the best part of 30 quid!

I am paid close to six figures and hand on heart if I lost my job, I know I’d be worse off for sure, but not so worse off that I’d be devastated. In a way it’s quite liberating… I care less about keeping my job than I once did! What’s the point!!!!

I have only just seen this on Amazon so this is my very reactionary post to it 😅

You are correct, £20 is a really trivial amount for someone on six figures, its lunch at Gails, or a couple of G&Ts in the pub, or a trip to the cinema, if you can't afford this sort of thing on your salary you are doing something wrong.

I know what you are saying. Prices have sky rocketed, I noticed it with the annual stocking fillers £2.49 for after 8s. £1.75 for Terry's chocolate orange, used to get them both for 99p not so long ago

I guess hardback books have always been expensive, hence paperbacks, libraries, charity shops etc but with net income of around £5k pcm not affording £20 for a book doesn't really make sense.

Books, coffee, chocolate, my three best things are much more expensive than they were. I don't remember ever thinking I can't afford them before. The irony of being on the highest salary I have ever been on and deciding not to buy a bar of fruit and nut because £3.50 is an outrageous price for a bar of chocolate is not lost on me.

I love books.
But this year as part of my getting rid of stuff campaign I have got rid of most of them.
Read stuff on kindle.

Buy them second hand in something like Abe books - I never pay full price for hard backs unless I want to

@Barney16 chocolate has gone up a lot recently as cocoa harvests bave failed in Africa due to climate change. Less product +same demand = higher prices. People seem to forget food actually has to be grown and weather impacts that.

To be honest, if spending £22 on any kind of treat is a hard decision even on £100k, the issue isn't the price of hardback books, it's on your outgoings more generally. I am on a lot less than you (as is my DH) and wouldn't need to cut my cloth to afford £22. A friend of mine who is single is on less than me and regularly buys books!

As for whether a book is expensive at £22, I don't think it is really when you look at so many things (movies, theatre, prepped food) which costs the same or more but provides less hours of entertainment and can be shared onwards afterwards. Look at it this way, for the price of two movie tickets or two charlie bingham meals you can get entertainment for hours! Plus, per PP there are loads of much cheaper ways to enjoy reading. In general, everything is expensive these days, but i don't think books are worse than most things.

If you’re able to, you should only buy second hand books by dead authors. Live authors rely on actual book sales to get by.

Hardbacks have always been expensive,
irrespective of whether you buy from Amazon or an indie bookstore. I suggest using Audible or Kindle if you can’t wait for the paperback to save money.

Online secondhand bookstore. We bought 4 books for price of one for DD recently. All in great condition.

I hear you. I will wait for books to appear in the library or buy them later second hand. No such thing as a chocolate library😥😂

I strongly disagree about books specifically tbh – when you think about them in terms of the amount of pleasure you can get from a good book, then even at £20+ they are the biggest bargain there is. If you can spend 50 hours or more with a classic then we probably ought to be grateful prices haven’t reached £100+ yet. It would still be a great deal!

I paid over 15 quid for two slices of cake and two teas yesterday. I spend money without care and attention but that brought me up sharp. The pot of tea only produced two cups so it’s not as if you got a refill of tea. I am going into 26 with a more gimlet eye fixed on prices. The cake was nice but not worth the amount I paid. I see a lot of pubs closing down. People don’t have the money for £6 plus pints etc.

Meant to say, I have noticed the books prices too. If there is a hardback book I really want I wait for second hand. I am also a big fan of the 99p Kindle books. I prefer physical books but prefer digital prices! However, some kindle book prices outside of deals have also jumped up, sometimes pennies behind a paperback, which makes no sense.

So you're saying there should be no second hand book trade 'because authors need an income'?

It's the same argument that people use about restaurants etc. The price they need to charge to make a profit has risen hugely so we need to continue paying it if we want them to survive.

But people only have a certain disposable income and most have to make choices about how they spend it. No-one has an obligation to support the choices of others to the detriment of their own financial stability whether it's by buying a second hand book instead of a new one (or using the library, which earns the author a small fee for every book borrowed, so it would be interesting as to how much the author earns from different ways of obtaining a book) or choosing to make their own lunch and coffee instead of paying £10-15 a day at independent suppliers.

With books there's also the resources/space issue. If everyone bought a new hardback every time they wanted to read a book, as well as the huge cost, they'd be drowning under the weight of books in no time. What are they supposed to do with them once they've read them?

I got a lovely floral Christmas bouquet from Tesco yesterday half price at £10 in the reduced flowers section. Looked just as good as the £20 bouquet. Shop around!

Dont buy from Amazon.
Support your local independent bookshop. Or borrow from the library.

My son's secondary school "closed" their school library end of last year because they couldn't afford replacement books.😪 What a sad state of affairs. The only good thing is that the kids now walk to the local library once a week and choosing books has become a bit of a weekly event, even amongst the 14yr olds. My son says they all talk about what book they want to get or did get. I've heard annecdotally that is has also taken the pressure of the kids who arent reading to the same age as their class mates.

So whilst it is awful that a school cant provide books, it has hopefully resulted in a love of library trips.

Oh stop it. You're on a relatively enormous wage, you can afford the book if you actually wanted to.
But just get it from the library and stop moaning.

Wait for the paperback.
buy books in charity shops
use the library

books were always expensive. I used to save for months to buy a book by my favourite author when I was a child.

YANBU OP. Books felt like an affordable luxury to me when I was younger and absolutely skint- yes hardbacks and non-fiction was expensive, but paperback fiction seemed like something I could pick up on a fortnightly basis at £6.99 or £7.99.

Now some paperback fiction is about £15, and it does make me feel I can't take the same risk on a new author etc (although I do also use my library, which helps- use them or lose them!)

I actually disagree about books and say this as a lifelong reader. Books in this country are cheaper than in some other countries, e.g Australia where my mother is where £17 or so is standard for a paperback.

When you consider how long a book takes to write and all the people involved in its publication from editors to printers and publishers, they're actually pretty good value. Also writers get a fraction of the cost of a hardback, I think my author friend earns 20p for every £20 hardback he sells.

When I was a kid, books were far more expensive compared to earnings and were considered more of a luxury item. I read a lot from various libraries and second hand.

Now you can get Kindle books reasonably cheaply, massive second hand on line books like World of Books and eBay, as well as libraries and bookshops putting offers on to compete with the above.

I saw a thank you card value £12 and nothing very special or elaborate. Crazy is an understatement.

I told a pack of butter to fuck off in Tesco - it was £3.15! An ordinary 250g pack of unsalted butter!

That's more than doubled the price in, what, a year? Was £1.50 or there aviation not standard up u til this year?

Mad.

I’m grateful for Amazon because I can’t justify spending full price for new books even though I would like to support my local bookshop. Just the way it is.

I love love love my library. I watch as inflation pushes all my favourite treats up but the library is still completely free.