Potter Publisher Decides to Make More Money!

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Apparently with the rabid pre-order ferocity of potential Harry Potter readers, Scholastic Children's Books decided that the only thing better than making a helluva lot of money, is to make even more.  Thus, one of the many records Harry Potter and The Order of The Pheonix is set to break is one for Most Expensive Children's Book.  Scholastic announced Thursday that Potter would hit the shelves with a MSRP of $29.99, a four dollar increase over the last book in the series at $25.95 and a solid fifteen dollars above the average for children's literature.  

What's the excuse?  Read on.

According to CNN.com's article, Scholastic states:

...that some customers may object to the price, but cited increased production costs and the new book's anticipated length, well over 700 pages.

"Clearly, the cost has gone up for printing, paper, etc.,"' she said. "We're hoping people can afford it, but this is a very big book, a third larger than the last Potter book, and we have to be realistic."

I'm not actually going to fault Scholastic for following supply and demand economics, and charging what the market will clearly bear.  Let's be honest, if you decipher the PR speak above you can see that Scholastic knows that the neglegible readers that might be turned off by a price hike will be vastly offset by the increased revenues.  Almost certainly, some consumers will stomp their feet and even say something as idiotic as "price gouging" (hopefully this doesn't apply to you), but it only makes financial sense.  Frankly, I'm pretty pleased to see publishers have the opportunity to turn a solid profit off the written word.  I'd much rather the money go to Scholastic and Rowling than, say, the producers of dreck like American Idol and Joe Millionaire.  

- Elysium

Comments

Production costs?  What costs?  It's not like they're paying Patrick Stewart for a cameo or some such.

That's not too costly for a book of that size. They'll still sell a lot of books either way.

 

the robert jordan books are like $34.95 or whatever now.  that price is comparable to everything else on the market.

it sucks but thats business for ya.

I would assume "production" of a book entails making sure the cover art is just right, managing the editors, etc...

I'm just going to buy my copy at CostCo, the way I did with my other 4 copies.