11 ms·
> $15-20 US book prices seem weirdly expensive. I just sampled the prices from the best sellers here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/ https://ww
by omoikane 3y ago
> $15-20
US book prices seem weirdly expensive. I just sampled the prices from the best sellers here:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/
https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/bestsellers/books/ https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/bestsellers/books/
The US prices averages out to ~$15, while the Japanese prices average out to $10. You might say most of that is due to the current exchange rate (1 USD = 154 JPY), but then most books listed on Amazon Japan's "novels" best sellers seemed to be priced around ~$6 USD (~900 JPY), compared to the $18-22 in Amazon.com's "literature and fiction" list.
We can try the same exercise with
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/bestsellers/books/ https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/bestsellers/books/
and the average comes out to ~$11 USD (~£9 GBP)
- Ray20 3y agoAren't in Japan average selled fiction book is way smaller?
- omoikane 3y agoDid you mean page count? For the novels I read, 200-300 per volume seems common. This seems comparable to the English novels I have, so it feels like less money for roughly same amount of content. Because many light novels come in series that are spread over several volumes, it's arguable that it costs more money to finish a story because you have to read all these volumes instead of one monolithic tome. I buy the volumes one by one as they are released and don't feel that the individual books are that expensive, but someone catching up on an old series might feel different. If you mean physical size, the average English books does seem physically larger than the average Japanese book.