: Re: Why do hardcover books retail for more than three times the cost of softcover books? One thing I've noticed while browsing bookstores is that hardcover books tend to cost more than softcover

@Fox6458700

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The hardcover version is the full version of the book. It costs full price. It is sold on the first day the book is available and marketed to the most enthusiastic readers who are willing to pay full price, and who typically want the prestige and ruggedness of hardcover. It is not designed to be cheap. It’s designed to be prestigious and enduringly rugged.

The paperback version is the cheap version of the book. It is cheaper because it is primarily designed to be cheap. The thick cardboard is replaced with thin cardboard, the thick paper with thin paper, the color illustrations with black and white, and so on. It is available about a year after the hardcover and is marketed to readers who are either less enthusiastic than the hardcover readers, or more budget-conscious.

An analogy for this in movies is the way that a movie is released in 8K quality for per ticket at the cinema on day one, and then a year later you can watch the same movie in 2K quality on Netflix as part of your monthly subscription. The people who are most excited to see the movie want to see it in higher quality and don’t care that it is per ticket. The people who watch it a year later are less excited and want to see it cheaply and don’t care that it is lower quality.

As an example, “The Wolf of Wall Street” was released:

hardcover September 25, 2007 .52
paperback August 26, 2008 .77

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