There are tons of price cuts that paperbacks (and especially MMPBs) use that they don't bother with on (most) hardcovers, because if you're getting a hardcover

There are tons of price cuts that paperbacks (and especially MMPBs) use that they don't bother with on (most) hardcovers, because if you're getting a hardcover you probably don't care about absolute lowest cost. And there's stuff much cheaper than MMPB but they're very rare (think phonebooks and old catalogs).