FYI #4 A Trip to the Bookstore

Books.

As some of you may know, I worked at Barnes & Noble Booksellers for about 7 months. I've had a lot of training on types of books and pricing. Mass Markets are usually around $6.99 OR $7.99 USD (united states dollars). These are the smaller paperback books. The paper quality isn't the greatest and tends to yellow over time, but it does it's job which is to get thousands of copies of a particular book to people for an affordable or cheaper price. This is especially important in comparing to it's sister book, the Trade paperback. Trade PB's tend to be a little bigger with a finer grade of paper. These run around $12.00 or $14.00 USD at B&N. Most people when getting paperbacks, especially in fiction, romance, or sci-fi/fantasy novels, tend to get the Mass markets. This is good, too, if there are a lot of series of a book. Blah Blah Blah. I'm sure you care. Here's my point. I used to think that B&N was a little expensive (I go to the library or used book store a lot, so anything not free or under a dollar is expensive to me). But a few weeks ago, I was putting applications into book stores in the malls around here, none of them as good as B&N and Borders. I decided to see what prices were like here, so I picked up a Mass Market book that I had seen many times when I worked at B&N. I was expecting the price to be a little more than in America, just because of the exchange rate of the money. But I was not prepared to see this book at $28.00 NZD (new zealand dollars). Now, American money is worth a little more than New Zealand's, but even with the money difference, that's still like $22.00 USD. That's like $15.00 more! I was shocked! I didin't even look at the hardcover books! I spoke with someone who told me that pretty much all of the books in NZ are shipped from overseas, so the shipping is really expensive. Crazy. Be happy that books are less expensive in the U.S. I sure am!