: Re: What determines a book's price? Ideally, a book price should be proportional to its publication cost. Since some books and topics have potential for higher sales, publishers increase the price.

@Hamaas631

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I think the simple answer is that the publisher has to recover their costs on the expected sales of the book, and tend to price accordingly. There is also the drive that they want to charge as much as they can for it, while not damaging their sales.

So academic or technical books are liable to have similar or higher costs than novels, for example, because they need checking for accuracy by people who know the subject. They are often also larger and thicker, requiring more time to check.

The potential sales of these are hugely less than popular novels. Some of them will sell hundreds, maybe thousands, rather than tens of thousands that novels can sell. So their income is liable to be less - if the book takes off in academic circles, they will get a nice profit from it, but if it fails to take off, they will make a loss. Hopefully, it balances out.

There is a different market for regulatory books, that is, books that certain organisations need to have, which will have known basic sales, but they will be businesses, so they will charge more. There are extra costs for making sure it is strictly correct and valid, according to the regulations, and companies will pay £200+ a year for the latest copy. Publishers will price according to what they think the market will take.

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