Posts Tagged ‘Harry Potter’

So, Albus is out of the closet. Seems someone not a million miles away from me has something to say about that on Comment is Free

Parental Advisory: Contains mild to moderate microeconomic references. But no spoilers.

Like some 11 million others, I bought the final Harry Potter book last Saturday. What frustrated me was having to buy it in hardback. Why are books only released in hardback format? Does anyone prefer them?

Hardback books are useful for libraries and similar venues, as they wear more slowly and are much harder to damage - useful when they will be read and re-read by none-too-careful borrowers. However, they are heavier, harder to hold, and more expensive than paperbacks. The durability is not all that useful when even an avid re-reader (such as myself) is only likely to read any one book five or six times.

I’m not just assuming every reader’s like me. A good sign that few private buyers prefer hardback is their disappearance once paperbacks are released. This suggests that once the alternative is available, no-one chooses the hardback. Supporting this is the fact that second hand bookshops (such as Blackwell’s) explicitly refuse to buy back hardback versions of books available in paperback - due to lack of demand.

So why are new books released first in hardback? The library explanation isn’t enough - they’re a niche market. Until recently, many DJs preferred vinyl to CDs, yet new albums aren’t released any earlier on vinyl than CD. The best explanation I’ve encountered comes from Tim Harford’s “Undercover Economist” (now available in paperback). It’s essentially as follows:

Publisher wants to make the most money he can from his book. He’ll make more money per book if he can make people who are really eager to read a book pay more; but he also wants to sell lots of copies, which means dropping the price. Now, if there’s a cheap version available, everyone buys that one. Releasing the expensive hardback version is a form of price discrimination. Keen readers buy the expensive version, released several months early, casual readers the cheap one.

There are two reasons this argument seems flaky, though. One’s a weakness in the argument, the other relates to changes in publishing:

1. Think about album releases again. I paid £9.95 for the Klaxons’ album (well worth it) the week it was released. Since then, it’s dropped to £3 in some retailers. This is the same price discrimination strategy. Fans like me buy on release, casual listeners buy once it’s cheap. The differentiating factor is time - so why should the publisher of a book increase his cost by further differentiation? One explanation is that the publisher needs to print some hardbacks for libraries, so might as well lower his cost-per-book by printing more - perhaps.
2. Book selling is becoming far more competitive for major releases, as the price war for the Deathly Hallows revealed (some supermarkets even cross-subsidised the book). As the market becomes more competitive, any extra profits from discrimination strategies vanish. Meaning the extra cost is for naught.

Perhaps it’s this shift in bookselling that will herald the (in my opinion overdue) demise of the hardback - it certainly seems like a format which has had its day. There ends our brief sojourn through the world of publishing economics, which in the interests of full disclosure, I will remind readers is a field I know precious all about.

Deathly Hallows - review in brief: Not bad, certainly an improvement on five and six. Also makes clear why it was necessary to make book six so gut-wrenchingly dull: it does have a purpose, and seven is at least much pacier.