Who am I to complain?

I sell books for a living. That's normally a pretty good job. I get to see new books, I get to review books before they hit the street, I get to hang out with generally friendly customers that like to read. Of late, there have been times when that job isn't so good. Two words, book prices.

If you aren't North American, or if you're head is stuck in the sand, you may not have noticed that the American Dollar is having a rough time. There are a variety of things involved there, but the important part is that the Canadian Dollar is NOT having a rough time. That's good for some people, bad for others, indifferent for many. For those of us that make a living selling books, It's not so good.

For any given book, there are three significant sources.

1) Canada
2) United States
3) Other

1) If a book is published in Canada, it is likely made with Canadian pulp, and the author and publisher are being paid their cut in Canadian dollars, as are the workers, shippers, couriers, booksellers. You may have noticed that none of those people have offered to take pay cuts now that the dollar is doing well. Imagine that. No real reason on earth why the price should change at all.

2) United States. Yes, the C$ is worth more, yes, prices are dropping, no, they are not dropping as fast as customers would like. Lets do a little background work. A) The North American Free Trade agreement has zero effect on this. Even when/if there was a duty on books, it was minimal and a long time ago. But there is still G.S.T. Any book crossing into Canada must have G.S.T paid, and, most likely, a brokerage firm is taking a couple of percent for calculating that G.S.T. The publisher pays shipping to the broker, pays shipping to the Canadian warehouse from the broker, pays to maintain a distribution warehouse in Canada (either their own, or a percentage to a Canadian company) all to get the book to the equivalent spot where it would have started in the U.S. Before the book gets near a book store, it has cost the supplier 10-20% more than it did to ship from the U.S. warehouse to all U.S. stores.

Canada is a smaller market than the U.S. Books have to be shipped large distances in smaller quantities. Publishers' Reps have to cover larger territories to sell the same number of books to make a living. Canadians have higher minimum wages. Freight costs here are higher, Gasoline is more expensive (like it or not) Everything from window washing to snow removal costs are higher per hour (and more frequent in the case of snow).

3) Most non North American books are Commonwealth sales that have been imported from the U.K. The U.K. Pound is worth C2.01. A year ago, the pound was worth C2.10. Two years ago the pound was worth...hmmm, C2.10. Three years ago the pound was worth...C2.30. Ten years ago, in Sept 1997, the Pound was worth C2.20, so in the last 3 years, the Canadian dollar has moved a bit less than 15% versus the pound, half of that in the last week. It remains within 10% of where it was a decade ago. Much the same is true of the Euro. Since it settled a few months after introduction at C1.60, it has dropped less than 20% in 7 years. There has been virtually no movement over 2 years ago.


Add to that the legislation. Most countries have some form of protectionist legislation to preserve local jobs. The government of Canada says that a publisher may charge the U.S. price converted to C$, plus 15% to cover excess costs. As long as they do that, it is ILLEGAL for a book store to import the book from the United States.

Next time you take a chunk out of some bookseller's day, consider the origin and whether you, and every truck driver, warehouse worker, and postie you know, would be happy to take a 10-20% cut in pay so that your books can cheaper.