Thank you for the detailed background on the issue. I support your YES answer to the questions posed.
As an author & artist, I know that I make bilingual children’s books for the joy of creation and to support multilingual children, not to earn a salary. At the same time, we in the book making world should not have to go into debt to get books in front of readers. So book prices cannot remain stagnant.
Thanks! There was an interesting discussion on a Facebook group devoted to books with readers saying they "can't afford" new books, so they mostly buy used books. I'm grateful for the used book industry because everybody should have books and if they can't afford new books, then that's a solution. And of course libraries! That is why we have libraries... But we do need to make sure the industry can remain intact. I would also support raising the price of books sold into libraries, but at the same time, geez Louise, libraries are very much under attack and severely under budget right now. A discussion for another time...
Clear and thoughtful analysis! Thanks for that. We're all getting squeezed . . . I have a niece who would roll her eyes and say, "End-stage capitalism . . ."!
That or it's just that the book business has not been able to catch up with rising costs for a couple of decades due to consumer demand and unwillingness to pay the price we really need to charge for books. The whole system probably needs to be revamped but that's difficult to do!
Thank you for the detailed background on the issue. I support your YES answer to the questions posed.
As an author & artist, I know that I make bilingual children’s books for the joy of creation and to support multilingual children, not to earn a salary. At the same time, we in the book making world should not have to go into debt to get books in front of readers. So book prices cannot remain stagnant.
Thanks! There was an interesting discussion on a Facebook group devoted to books with readers saying they "can't afford" new books, so they mostly buy used books. I'm grateful for the used book industry because everybody should have books and if they can't afford new books, then that's a solution. And of course libraries! That is why we have libraries... But we do need to make sure the industry can remain intact. I would also support raising the price of books sold into libraries, but at the same time, geez Louise, libraries are very much under attack and severely under budget right now. A discussion for another time...
Clear and thoughtful analysis! Thanks for that. We're all getting squeezed . . . I have a niece who would roll her eyes and say, "End-stage capitalism . . ."!
That or it's just that the book business has not been able to catch up with rising costs for a couple of decades due to consumer demand and unwillingness to pay the price we really need to charge for books. The whole system probably needs to be revamped but that's difficult to do!