Canadian book prices falling down, falling down

So you pick up a book and most of the time (if North American rights or world rights were initially bought by a US house) there are two prices: the real and the fake…er, the American and the Canadian price. And because the Canadian dollar value had been sucking for so many years (during my first stint in NYC, $1 CDN = $0.65 US, and sometimes lower) the prices for books had to go up, with hardcovers inching toward and past the $40 range. But now, with my home country’s dollar that much stronger, the industry over there has begun to drop the prices back.

The problem is, as the CBC reports, it’s taking an awfully long time to realign the prices, and people are bitching about the differential now. “I’m frustrated that it seems like we have to pay more,” Jeremy Maxom told CBC Radio. “If you do a quick exchange in your head, it just doesn’t seem like they’re accurate,” he said, referring to the Canadian price listed on the back of a book he’s just bought. “The Canadian price is higher than it should be.”

The prices, which are usually calculated as being the exchange rate plus roughly 10 per cent for handling costs, should be adjusted by the fall. But that might not be good enough for some consumers – unless another measure, killing the GST for book-buying, takes place. But we’ll see how *that* goes…

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