Tuesday, September 25, 2007

When buying American books, Canadians pay more

When it comes to buying American books, the Canadians are getting ripped off. For proof you simply need to take a look at the U.S. versus Canadian price on a first edition dust jacket for any given year, and compare it against the exchange rate during that time period. To see what I mean, take a look at the price of three books published in 2005 when the value of the Canadian Dollar was between 80 to 85 U.S. cents.

Three books published in 2005

The cost in Canadian money is consistently more than the exchange rate alone can explain. Most are several dollars more than they should be. In the most extreme case, if you purchased a copy of William Vollmann’s Europe Central in 2005, you would have paid $58.00 Canadian versus $39.95 U.S. That’s about $12 more that the exchange rate.

Now that the Canadian and U.S. dollar are on parity, these differences will become much more obvious, and you might see publishers change the price more often to compensate. First edition collectors should keep a careful eye on the Canadian price that is printed on the dust jacket. I think we will see more situations where the Canadian price on the first printing might be different on subsequent printings, and that will make first edition jackets more scarce and potentially more valuable. We might see a repeat of The Joy Luck Club first edition where the Canadian price started out as $26.50 on the first issue jacket, and was changed to $24.95 on later printings.

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