A few friends are suffering sticker shock at the cost of Nightmares with the Bible.I offer my sincere apologies.To those in the normal world (outside academia) such pricing appears predatory.It is, but you’re not the intended prey.One of the pillars upon which capitalism rests is “what the market will bear.”You price up any product until people stop buying it, then you retreat.I’m no fan of the dismal science, but I am certainly not in the cheering section for capitalism.Institutionalized greed.Still, I can explain a little of why Nightmares comes with such a high price tag.Publishers have long indulged in “library pricing.”Although many libraries now buy ebooks instead, the model persists.The idea is that libraries can afford higher prices than mere mortals.For those of you not in academia, $100 is actually on the low end. Believe it or not.
In researching Nightmares I saw monographs I coveted.Some of them priced at $175.Considering that some of these were under 200 pages, my primitive math sets the rate at about 87 cents per page (single-sided).Here’s where the disconnect comes in.Nightmares was written for general readers.I long ago gave up the idea that to be intelligent a book must be impenetrable.And academics wonder why people question their utility?Only after I signed the contract did I learn that the Horror and Scripture series, of which Nightmares is the second volume, would suffer “library pricing.”There is a discount code for those who may not be libraries.But please, have your library buy a copy.That’ll give me fuel for a paperback argument.
In a “catch-22” scenario, it goes like this: a publisher tells an author, “if your book sells well enough at this price we’ll issue a paperback.”The truth is your hardcover only sells well if you’re well known or if your choice of topic is truly compelling.If the unit cost were actually the same as the library pricing I’d be a rich man.Where does all that money go?It’s a legitimate question. It’s not royalties! Academic publishing is an expensive business to run.Apart from overheads—there are always overheads—you need to pay tech companies to ready your files so they can be printed.Unless the print run (generally under 200 now) is intended to sell out you’ll have it done domestically so that you don’t have to pay warehousing costs on unsold stock.I knew a single-man academic publisher who stored his stock in his basement.Excuses aside, my apologies that Nightmares costs so much.I’ll send the discount code to anyone who’d like it.