Looking around the internet, I see the price of Queer Universes varies quite a bit from online booksellers. In the US, the distributor for LUP is Chicago University Press, which has the book listed at $85.00 US. Amazon.com has it at the same price, but Amazon.ca is selling it for $68.01 Cdn -- at the current exchange rate, that would be $52.84 US (plus shipping and handling). That's a pretty nice deal! At the moment, only the hardcover edition is available, so if you want to read the book and can't afford it, urge your local library to purchase a copy.
By the way, there are a few listed in second hand bookstores online and through re-sellers, but only one of these seemed to be genuinely used. And most copies had an asking price of over $100 US -- how does that work?
Watch the Giller Power Panel on YouTube
1 year ago
Those prices are iniquitous. There is no even remotely plausible excuse to charge $85 for one slim volume without illustrations. And it beggars belief that they don't have a trade paperback or electronic version. This is why Publishing As We Know It is dying. Tuh.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the heads up, and for having edited this book. I went and ordered my copy of Queer Universes after I read Nicola's post. I hope the hardcover gets sold out soon and finds its way into a paperback people won't be so hesitant to buy. Cheers.
ReplyDeleteI second Nicola's call for an electronic version (as a newly-minted Kindle owner). I would love to buy this book, but can't afford to buy it at these prices (my over-$40/book budget is reserved for stuff related to Finnish mythology/folkore).
ReplyDeleteThank goodness for interlibrary loan. Unfortunately, though, ILL doesn't result in more sales for the publisher (& royalties for the writers). The economics of this really stinks!
(BTW thanks Nicola for alerting us on your blog to this blog & this book.)
The only problem with Kindle is that it's not available outside the US, which makes electronic versions not quite such a good deal for the rest of us. Fingers crossed that we sell enough hardcovers to get LUP to release a trade paper version. The sad thing is that the price is not out of line for academic publishing -- it seems to be a result of having a relatively small market for academic books, so that a lot of publishers rely primarily on library sales.
ReplyDelete