The book is available from Amazon.com for $31.96 which is touted as a 20%
saving over the regular price. For Canadian purchasers it might be a small
saving depending on the cost of postage. It would work out to about to
about $45 Cdn. and if it is shipped via Purolator - which they used for a
shipment to me - it would cost an additional $7 US or about 9.90 Cdn. for a
total cost of about $54 Cdn. My last book came without GST being tacked on
and, by Purolator, I didn't have to pay the Canada Post $5 "handling"
gouge.
For someone living in a province with sales tax it would definitely be
cheaper to order from Amazon.com however it is still a hell of a lot of
money for a book.
Does anyone else feel as I do, that books have to be the single biggest
ripoff, in terms of inflation, of anything currently on the market? Look
back over the past few decades. Pocket books and other soft cover books
have increased in price from the '50s when they cost 10 or 15 cents to
today when a single novel - admittedly a much thicker volume - costs up to
$10.00. Inflation in the hundreds of percentage points is not found
anywhere else. Look at electronics, home appliances, booze, food,
automobiles, housing. Nothing compares. In 1956 one could buy a new MGA
for about the price of a new Chev. Today a new Miata - closest available
comparison in N.America costs about 10 times as much in today's dollars.
Booze is a real bargain, as are home appliances and electronics. Housing
is still a bargain with increases of only about 15 times for comparable
levels of housing - given the standard ot the two times. The cost of fuel
is a real bargain with increases of only 5 or 6 times as much as the '50s.
So why are books such a scam? Why does a book which cost $9.95 in 1978
sell for 39.95 in 1998? The new Chev in 1978 cost about $8,000 versus a
better-equipped, more sophisticated new car - with many more safety
features - at about $22,000. The book is the same book from the same
printing. The vast increase in book prices is not relative to automobile
price increases and not justifiable when real wages have stayed fairly
neutral or dropped during the same period of time.
We have also seen a tremendous increase in warehouse book stores, mail
order book outlets, on-line sales, and what would appear to be a surge in
book demand. Theoretically with sales up and "bargain" outlets
proliferating we should be seeing dramatic price decreases. This appears
to be the case with "bargain books" which are cranked out to adorn coffee
tables and are produced in low-wage areas, but doesn't explain the price of
pulp publications and serious hardcover offerings.
The whole thesis is that books in the '50s represented a far smaller
portion of a daily wage than today. As a student, I earned about 1.25 per
hour when a pocket book cost 25 cents and a textbook was under $5. Taxes
were insignificant and I kept nealy all of what I earned. Today's student
is lucky to earn $7.00 per hour (in Alberta). The pocket book costs at
least an hour's wages and textbooks cost a day's wages and much more.
Sales taxes and income taxes eat up a large portion of that small wage.
Who's getting rich?
John
>Trevor Boicey wrote:
>
><My local bookshop got a copy of "MG: The untold story" by
>David Knowles in.
>
> Has anyone read this book? Is it worth it? The text looked
>excellent but they only had it in hardcover at $55.95. The other
>thing that I was a little afraid of is that a lot of the book
>was about later cars that only the UK ever saw anyways.
>
> Opinions?
>
>--
>Trevor Boicey
>Ottawa, Canada>
>
>Trevor,
>
>This is a great book. It is the most thorough history of the marque I have
>seen yet. It goes deep into the development of the cars, alternatives
>examined, the whys and wherefores of what finally emerged. There is more
>detail than I have ever seen before that puts these events into context with
>what else was happening elsewhere within Morris/BMC/Leyland/Rover. All this
>is told with a nice balance between the details of cars themselves, the
>personalities of those developing them and the car market in general. Yes
>there are lot of cars that didn't go to North America - there are a lot of
>prototypes and development cars and alternatives to the production cars that
>never saw the light of day anywhere until now. There's a great deal of detail
>on the development of the post Abingdon cars up to the MGF. This is a great
>book that I would recommend very highly. The $59.95 price sounds a bit steep
>though. I got my copy through BritBooks for $39.95US and I have seen it in
>local stores at the same price.
>
>Kim Tonry
>Editor - MGB Driver - the Journal of the North American MGB Register
>Downers Grove, Illinois, USA
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