Average Book Prices Rose Less Last Year

Staff -- graphic arts online, 1/1/2001

During this past year, the various consumer and producer price indexes covering books and other reading materials showed highly variable inflation rates. Overall, book prices rose 2.4% between October 1999 and October 2000 after rising by 2.6% during the previous 12-month period. In some product groups, average prices rose at twice this rate. But there were other subsectors having great difficulty in passing along their sharply higher input costs for labor, paper, and distribution services.

The consumer price index for the range of general-interest recreational reading materials rose by only 0.6% between October 1999 and October 2000 after increasing 1.1% during full-year 1999. Average prices of mass-market/adult trade books declined by 3.6% in the 12-month period ending last October. Medical book prices also dropped by 3.2% through the first 10 months of 2000 after rising by 3.6% the year before.

But the price index for general reference materials soared 4.2% between October 1999 and last October, including a 5.1% increase in the average price for encyclopedias. Educational books and supplies continued to cost students much more. The price of technical, scientific, and professional book titles rose an average of 2.9% in the year ending last October, while high school (5.0%), college (5.5%), and elementary school (6.3%) textbooks recorded the sharpest price increases of any book products between October 1999 and this past October.