Is it the manufacturing technique that creates this price difference? Why do hardcover books retail for multiple times the amount of softcover books? Improve this question. Zayne S Halsall 2, 19 19 silver badges 33 33 bronze badges. Kalamane Kalamane 1 1 gold badge 4 4 silver badges 5 5 bronze badges.
Because they cost more to make? Because hard cover books can be kept for longer time and soft cover books may get torn within a short span of time.. Soo I dont really know why, but you can see that, for example, the Bioshock book is 5. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Your analysis covers the cost difference. The OP was asking about the price difference. In particular, from wikipedia , "Hardcover books are also marginally more expensive to manufacture and usually much more so to purchase.
Kirk Wikipedia's assertion isnt't supported by anything unless I'm misreading it, which is possible. My analysis could be wrong too, but I think it'd take either a better analysis or a more definitive source to say for sure. I've gotta disagree with this, not because of the math or anything. The reason hardcover books cost more is because they are the first to be published, the reason they are the first to be published is because they can drive a higher price point.
Trades and Mass Market come later to appeal to people who choose not to buy the more expensive book. This was all described to me by my boss at Waldenbooks 10 years ago and I don't imagine this part of the industry has changed all that much, even though many of the major players are bankrupt. Also, hardcovers don't on average retail for much more than trades after a few years.
Bookstores often need to get these off their shelves and will offer huge discounts. You only pay 3x for hardcover books when they're new - or online where shelving isn't as big a deal. Unless the book is extremely popular i. Harry Potter you rarely see trades and hardbacks of the same book next to each other on any given bookstore shelf, even though they are published within a year of each other. Peter Yeah, that's where things get complicated.
Some books are never released in paperback trade or mass market , some are never released in hardcover, some get heavily discounted to get people in the door, etc.
I was trying to keep the comparison as simple as possible, although I realize that that might be trivializing it a lot. Lev Reyzin Lev Reyzin. An excellent point - I was going to say somewhat the same thing, but didn't know the correct term for it.
Hardcover books cost so much more because people will pay so much more. And they will ignore sunk costs and segment all the way down to the marginal production cost which for e-books, can be very low indeed if the demand slackens. Kirk Woll Kirk Woll 1 1 silver badge 4 4 bronze badges.
Do you have any links to cost analysis that backs that up? We want Stack Exchange to be a source of factual information backed up by references and experience, not just opinions. Citations are nice, and I would provide it if I could. Lack of such doesn't actually make an answer incorrect. Nor is it by any means required on SE sites. It is potentially incorrect if you are guessing.
A citation would make it a better answer. Likewise, the paper is of higher quality and the printing is better too. If you want a book that will last the long-term, then a hardcover book is definitely worth the money.
The waiting time between an initial hardcover release and a paperback release really depends on the book. Publishers want to make the biggest profit possible from the hardcover before releasing the mass-published paperback. Some books will release the paperback six months after initial release, whereas others will come out a full year after initial release.
If you want a book for a quick read or to read while traveling, then paperback is for you. Here at BookSummaryClub I summarize my favorite non-fiction books into easily digested posts. Head across to one of the following pages for more goodies.
All Right Reserved. Hardcover vs Paperback — Which Is Best? Categories: Reading and Education. Authors must make profit somehow in a sector notoriously difficult to become a big seller. We are willing to pay more for hardbacks for various reasons. We have individually attached subjective value to hardbacks greater than paperbacks.
As more people hold this view, the value becomes a collective value, a shared psychological conception on the worth of a hardback versus a paperback. We may value the sturdiness, we may value how at the start it is newer and later it is older, maybe even a first edition. There is also the matter of time-preference; do you mind paying more to read it new or are you willing to wait up to a year for the cheaper paperback?
Marketing is key to influencing the prices we deem permissible for a book. Hardbacks may have fancier covers, be longer lasting and have a dust jacket to protect it. The pricing of books is a rather niche window into the interesting world of the economics of pricing. This goes for academic texts too. Both paperbacks and hardbacks are more expensive than books for the general public due to extremely limited demand, the time-preference of needing the newest scholarship for university libraries, and all compounded by the monopolistic cartel-like behaviour of publishers.
A significant problem, especially, as I previously explored , for academic eBooks. Older books are also just better than new ones, both in content and in their hidden secrets, so I find browsing second-hand bookshops much more rewarding.
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