james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
They should all write letters to Chapters, pointing out that as long as US publishers continue to price books in Canada as though the exchange rate was still what it was six years ago, there's precious little reason to buy books from a Canadian bricks and mortar store. Buying direct from the US in US dollars is _much_ cheaper.

Although....

If Canadians buy 10% of the books sold in Nearctica and are paying 1.25x US prices (once the actual exchange is taken into account), Canadian readers are disproportionately profitable to someone between the publisher and the bookseller [1]. A US sale of a $7 US book probably includes the publisher getting about $2.80, the distributor about $1.40 and the bookseller about %2.80 (I think). If you sell that book in Canada, the price probably works out to about $10.00 US. I wonder who gets that extra $3?

1: Say, are royalties to the authors based on the US price only?

Date: 2006-10-27 05:48 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rbos.livejournal.com
No kidding! I went to Chapters a couple of days ago to check for new Pratchett books (Science of Discworld III, yay!) and the divergence between US and Canadian prices is ridiculous - on the order of 30-40%, once normalized into USD. I complained about it to the desk clerk, maybe it'll wend its way up the chain of command.

Date: 2006-10-27 05:51 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] james-nicoll.livejournal.com
From what I've heard, head office isn't really interested in what the sale peons think.

A snail-mail letter campaign may work. So might buying from a US source (although that risks CHAPTERS whining to the Federales to make them make it illegal for private individuals to import books).

Date: 2006-10-27 05:56 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rbos.livejournal.com

from http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/article/chaptersinc

Indigo Books & Music Inc.,
468 King Street West, Suite 500
Toronto, ON M5V 1L8

I'll follow this up with some actual numbers on price differences from their Web site.

Date: 2006-10-27 05:58 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rbos.livejournal.com
or not. Databases midterm! Must .. stay .. on .. task!

Date: 2006-10-27 06:22 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] joenotcharles.livejournal.com
Hey, whatever happened to Science of Discworld II?? It came out in hardcover ages ago, and never came out in softcover so I assumed it tanked or something. But apparently it did well enough for a 3rd sequel.

Date: 2006-10-27 06:24 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rbos.livejournal.com
It was marked down to $12 as a paperback. I never saw SoD2 anywhere so I don't know.

Date: 2006-10-27 07:36 pm (UTC)
disassembly_rsn: Run over by a UFO (Default)
From: [personal profile] disassembly_rsn
SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD II *is* available in paperback (I've got a UK paperback edition of it, anyhow).

Date: 2006-10-27 06:05 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] desperance.livejournal.com
"1: Say, are royalties to the authors based on the US price only?"

Yup. One thing for sure: if there's loose money slopping around in the system, it don't come to the writers.

Date: 2006-10-27 08:06 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com
It's nice to see that someone else has issues with this routine as well. When I went out to the Royal Tyrrell last July, I was about to plunk down close to $150 for two of the only books in the museum's gift shop that I didn't already have...until I realized that they were both priced on 1999 rates. Considering how high the Canadian exchange rate has gone since then (it was pretty damn close to parity with the US the whole time I was there), I figured that I could buy three books at home for what those two were selling for, and left them for some other poor US sucker to buy.

Date: 2006-10-27 08:17 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] velochicdunord.livejournal.com
Canadian booksellers _are_ watching this. So write, protest loudly, and tell them every time you send off to an American site for final purchase.

I deeply resented that book prices are set 9 - 12 months in advance when I plunked down C $75/per title for a pile of tech books I _had_ to have back in August. C $375 odd later... and it was only 5 BLEEDING BOOKS!!

Date: 2006-10-28 03:41 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kraig.livejournal.com
I've mostly given up on buying new for partially that reason. (The other reason is even if the prices were at par, I could still easily bankrupt myself.)

Date: 2006-10-30 02:27 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] robertprior.livejournal.com
It's not just bookshops.

Apple prices its products based on the exchange rate at the time the product is introduced, and then doesn't adjust the price, so some items are 40% more expensive here than in the US. (Maybe this is a subtle ploy to encourage us to buy newer models?) This is particularly annoying with things like .mac, which is 50% more expensive here.

Royalties

Date: 2006-10-30 06:04 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] okumarts.livejournal.com
Unless my publisher is Canadian, the royalties are American. That's not so nice when the exchange rate is low. I keep hoping the Canadian dollar will dive each time royalties come up...
I've started buying things online because of the exchange inequity issue.

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