In the past five years, the price of the average hardcover book has rocketed from $17.95 to almost $24, and consumers are none too happy about it.
Publishers and bookstore managers say not to blame them. The extra cost goes to unavoidable production and sales costs.The biggest culprit, they say, is newsprint.
"Newsprint costs have risen as much as 200 percent in the last five years," says Len Oszustowicz, CEO of the Summit Publishing Group in Arlington, Texas. "You have to pass that cost increase along."
When everything is taken into account, profits from book sales can be just a matter of pennies, those in the business say.
When someone buys a book that costs $20, the author might clear $1.20 and the publisher would see $1.80 in profit from the sale - maybe. As for the bookstore, it might end up with an extra 20 or 30 cents.
"That's the ideal, but in reality our profit is often as little as 30 cents a book," says Judy Alter, who, as director of TCU Press in Fort Worth, publishes 15 to 20 books each year.
Publishing companies set, but don't receive, "suggested" retail prices for their books, Alter says. TCU Press typically sells a $20 book to bookstores for $12.
"You factor in distribution fees like shipping, which we pay, and that's $3 of the $12," Alter says. "Our authors are paid a flat 10 percent royalty fee, so they get $1.20 for the $20 book we've sold. This leaves $7.80."
But then come costs for staff artists and graphic designers, editing fees, newsprint and printing. Alter estimates that these costs factored together would average $6 for the typical book with a $20 price tag.
"That now lowers our income from each $20 book sold to $1.80," Alter explains. There's still the cost of copies for book reviewers and talk show hosts, plus other promotional expenses.
"That's why I estimate we might make 30 cents on that $20 book," she says. And that's if TCU Press sells all but 200 promotional copies of a 2,000-run book, which it often doesn't.
On the other end of the sales spectrum, bookstores struggle to break even on books, even after they have paid only 50 percent to 60 percent of their suggested retail prices.
"Bookstores, which are competing against each other to attract readers who want bargain prices, may offer them at 20, 30 or even 40 percent off suggested retail" for blockbuster titles, says Rob Harvey, general manager of Borders Books & Music in Fort Worth. "That can almost eliminate a per-book profit right there."
Stores must use their profit margins to pay employee salaries, rent, utilities and some advertising costs, Harvey says. And although it's true bookstores can return unsold books to publishers for credit against future purchases, he notes, "We would have to pay those shipping costs . . .
"Marlon Brando's autobiography, for instance - we ordered 300 copies and sold three."
If business is brisk and returns minimal, Harvey says, every sale of a $20 book "puts 20 cents or 30 cents on the store's bottom line."
Oszustowicz concludes that he can sympathize with readers who are frustrated by the higher costs of feeding their habits. But he doesn't want them thinking it results from corporate greed on the part of bookstores or book publishers.
"I think the public has a grossly exaggerated perception of the money we make," he says.