Book Prices Rise a Bit In Beginning of the Year

Book prices were up, down, and sideways during 2000 depending upon your title/reading genre of choice. Consequently, the various consumer and producer price indexes covering books and other reading materials showed highly variable inflation rates during this past year. Overall, book prices rose 2.7% between 1999 and 2000. Through the early months of 2001, inflation had accelerated just a bit, with February 2001 average prices coming in 3.3% higher than during February 2000.

The consumer price index for the whole range of general-interest recreational reading materials rose by a modest 1.2% during 2000, only marginally higher than the 1.1% increase recorded during 1999. For the second year in a row, the largest price increases were for books outside of the general interest arena, primarily educational and technical titles. Average prices of mass market/adult trade books actually declined by 1.0% between 1999 and 2000, and medical book prices dropped by an even steeper 2.8%.

But the price index for general reference materials soared 5.0% last year, including a 5.2% increase in the average price received for the sale of encyclopedias. Further, educational books and supplies continued to cost students at all levels of schooling a lot more than they used to in the past.

The price of technical, scientific, and professional book titles rose an average of 2.7% between 1999 and 2000, while elementary (+3.6%), high school (+4.6%), and college (+5.2%) textbooks recorded the sharpest price increases of any book products over the past year.

There's little evidence that school book inflation will abate much, if at all, this year. The February 2001 price index for high school textbooks was 3.7% higher than during February 2000, off just a bit from its full-year increase during 2000. But price index gains for the 12-month-period ending this February moved well above their full-year 2000 rates for both the elementary (+6.3%) and college (+9.4%) textbook product groups.