4 ms·

I would not be happy if a publisher would make such things. I mean there's mostly a hardcover and a paperback version, yes. but if they actually make books in l

• danmaz74 9y ago
  > why should somebody from a poorer market only have access to bad quality products It would be even worse if customers in the poorer market only had access to products they can't afford. The important thing IMHO is that the lower quality version also has a lower price, and that, in case of re-import, there's a way for customers to know.
• blackoil 9y ago
  In a country like India, we had eastern economy and similarly other subsidized editions. If a book costs 100 USD, it is beyond range of most students, as this crosses their monthly budget. So, while arbitrary these barriers have the place till we have movement of people.
• roywiggins 9y ago
  Price discrimination, yeah. You make cheap versions of a product for people who are very price sensitive- that is, people without much money. You still make a profit, they get a version of the product they can afford. I did this with math textbooks in college. You can buy "gray market" books, which are versions made for foreign markets but bought by resellers and reimported to the US. They're the same exact book, but printed without color, on cheap paper in a cheap binding. This was perfect for me, since they were also much cheaper than the US edition. If anything, the discrimination was going the other way. The only way to get a cheap copy of the book was to buy it off the gray market- the punisher wouldn't sell the cheap editions inside the US.