The price of a book goes down when it appears in paperback. But sometimes the opposite is true: a reissue blows it up, and that inflation isn’t always easy to understand.
This is the case, for example, of a book by Jean Dutourd, “L’Académie par un des 40”, published by Cherche-Midi. The 2009 edition of this short essay was worth €2.90, an exceptionally low price.
For the 2023 edition that appears on Thursday, it rose to 15 euros, more than five times.
The author has nothing to do with him, since he died in 2011. And the publisher explains that this work, published anonymously at the time, was enriched with a preface by another member of the French Academy, Erik Orsenna, and cartoons by Philippe Dumas. .
paper cost
In publishers’ choice of prices, inflation in the cost of paper is currently a major concern.
Variations can be much greater than in the case of “revised” or “increased” editions.
Example with the anthropologist and philosopher René Girard (1923-2015), whose Grasset undertook to publish all important titles, with new prefaces.
“Achever Clausewitz”, a 2007 interview book, was originally worth 22 euros at Carnets Nord editions. In the pocket, at Champs Flammarion in 2011, it dropped to 10.20 euros, but it’s sold out. It reappeared in large format in November in Grasset at 25 euros, which shows how reasonable the rise in book prices has been in fifteen years.
Two awards, two editions
In some cases, two prices coexist, for two different editions.
At Gallimard, David McNeil’s memoir of his father, Marc Chagall, “A Few Steps in the Footsteps of an Angel” was republished in November with “unknown paintings and drawings” by the artist.
If it is worth 25 euros in the famous White Collection, its color illustrations make it a completely different object than the Folio paperback, at 8.10 euros.
This spokesman for booksellers “is questioning a lot at the moment” to his colleagues about the perception of prices by customers.
Source: BFM TV
