Yes, books are bigger now, it's so they can charge a £13 for them instead of £7.

Plays havoc with my bookshelves, I have to have my books sorted by size rather than author just to make best use of the available room.


(Edited by Tycho 16/10/2008 19:12)

I think it has to do with the fact the people have been given a lot more forms of entertainment which means that the people that really want to buy (and read) a book, instead of use any of the other forms of entertainment, are also the people would be attracted by better / higher quality books and are willing to actually pay more for it.

And you know the gold ol' saying: "bigger is better".

That would be true if both a small cheap copy & a bigger higher quality version were available at the same time. This would give the customer the choice. Generally these days what happens is that when a book is published it is only available in the more expensive version. Then a couple of months down the line the more traditionaly sized edition is released.

Basically what the publishers are doing is selling a big paperback book at near hardback prices to people who don't want to wait for the normal paperback.


Over the last few years, for older books I have tended to buy from Abe books. You can generally pick up a secondhand hardback for the same price as a new soft cover & If you read books over & over again (like I do) they last so much longer. I've killed about 5 copies of Watership Down & 2 of Skallagrigg untill i got them in hard cover.

You also get the odd first edition too which is always a nice surprise when they arrive.



(Edited by Tycho 17/10/2008 00:49)