Am I alone in thinking that the cost of books in our sport/pastime is noticeably higher than in others?

Having been asked to put a list together for Xmas, I became increasingly frustrated at the price of many of the books I wanted. I'd like to think I'm not 'tight', but in the current climate of hard times spending the best part of £20-£25 on a book is a bit steep. To be fair though, I'm reluctant to spend that sort of money when things aren't so tight, it just makes it more pronounced at the moment.

It may be that the specialised nature of the market means they have to charge more to make their profit margins, does anyone know if this is the case?

To put a positive spin on it, over the last year or so I've resorted to buying 90% of my 'fishing library' (optimistic way of describing my small corner of the bookshelf) via ebay and secondhand bookshops for the simple reason that I can't afford to buy new ones.

I've been incredibly pleased with some of my purchases that have come in at under £10 (with three of the five being under £5) though, all great books and so so readable:

Brian Clarke - The pursuit of stillwater trout
John Goddard - Trout flies of stillwater
John Goddard - Stillwater flies: how and when to fish them
Goddard & Clarke - The trout and the fly
Pat O'Reilly - Matching the hatch

I don't doubt for a second that fly fishing is the only example of this, in my experience shooting books are also pretty pricey.

Thoughts and opinions?

Wilko

Cooking books too! although I have to say, I don't mind paying ££ for good material. Bad or obvious content pees me right off however.

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I agree that they are expensive. I recently spotted two fishing books in my local used-books store. They were marked at £6 each. I wanted one more than the other and offered £11 for both. They would not consider it and told me that they were very "competitively" priced - by which they probably meant that they had looked the books up on Abe and taken some median price. I bought the one really wanted for £6.

Your only chance of bargains is from amateur sellers not second-hand book shops - indeed even many amateurs now know about Abe and its like.

I know quite a few authors of fly fishing books, and if they manage to cover their costs then they're happy. It's down to specialist publishers having to publish small runs of books, invariably hardbacks with nice glossy photo's because that's the nature of fly fishing publications, with no economies of scale. For example, would a fly tying book sell these days without glossy pics of each fly? How many would they sell do you think if it was all text?

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Specialist subject area books are expensive things - and getting more so.

SWMBO bought an out-of-print book on "Rigid Heddle Weaving" from the USA and managed to import it for the traditional price of the poorly cephalopod.

As it happens she knows the woman who owns the printing rights and is about to organise a reprint in soft-cover - still stitched but not hardback - these will run £90 per copy....

How long before the specialist book, as a physical book, dies out altogether and we start buying PDFs over the interweb?

N.B. poorly cephalopod (4,5)

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That was a bargain!!!

A sick squid??? Sorry - I just don't get it.



Pikey

Wilko,

As no one else has mentioned it, try Coch-y-Bonddu for good value books. The website is http://www.anglebooks.com/. They advertise in the press, and have an extensive brochure for mail order. The bargains are in the books which are 'remaindered' after a relatively short time. So you can get books a year or two after they were published. I know I've often paid full price for one and seen it in their catalogue 12 months later.

I agree that most fly fishing books appear expensive, but I think it's down to economics of scale. How many new fly books worth reading/using would sell enough to get the price down to a reasonable level?

If you don't want to keep the book for future reference, the local lending library is usually a good source with a searchable catalogue which can be reserved. Councils are measured on the number of books borrowed, so are very keen to increase the number of borrowers if they can.

I have no connection to CyB, other than as a happy customer of many years.

Blimey, is she printing it on vellum or have you slipped in an extra zero by mistake? Or is she having to recommission all the artwork or something? That's a truly jaw-droppingly high price for something that's not a high spec bit of print. I don't know how many pages that book might run to, but for a bit of perspective, I recently quoted for a 128-page book, perfect-bound and four-colour throughout. I can't remember the size offhand, but it was bigger than your average paperback, although not quite A4. Anyway, IIRC, that came to not too much more than six quid per copy for a run of 1000. Obviously, the print bill isn't the only cost of involved in publishing a book – if it was, I wouldn't make a living – but I can't imagine what you'd have to do to justify charging £90 per copy.

I'm also surprised that more specialist publishers don't make use of print on demand. It costs a bit more per copy than traditional litho printing, but you don't need to run off a thousand copies at a time either. I recently bought my first POD book – William Henderson's Notes and Reminiscences of my Life as an Angler. And while it's a bit rough and ready, it only cost £12, which isn't bad compared to the £166.41 being asked for the cheapest original copy on ABE.

A great range of books but good value is not a handle I would hang on them. They are at the pricy end of the market for second hand books to my mind.
Tight Lines

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