Expensive how?

When did we decide that books were expensive? Through this two-week heatwave, reading the old Count (see previous post) through the hottest hours of the day, this is a question I keep coming back to. It was sparked in part by the fifth installment in the Globe & Mail's The Future of Books series from last Saturday (also online here) on the future of booksellers. To someone who has always harboured the dream of someday opening a bookstore, the talk of books and bookstores dying really rankles. And Toronto bookseller Ben McNally, for one, thinks the future of the business will depend in some measure on bringing customers back around to the idea "that books are great value at regular price." Amen.

For between thirty and forty dollars, sometimes even fifteen or twenty, depending on the genre and the format, we get, what, six, ten, twenty hours of entertainment and education (often both) to be consumed entirely at our leisure. I don't find comparisons between art/entertainment forms to be especially useful, but it occurs to me that the question does lend itself to a very crude tally: the hours of engagement offered (six, ten, twenty hours with a book vs four hours at a concert, two at a movie, etc), a coefficient for the ability to do so privately (as opposed to say a concert or a visit to an art gallery or a movie theatre) in an age when privacy and control and independence are supposed to be among our chief concerns, another for the relative ease of taking this wonderful little invention with us wherever we go (portability: this is what gets us fired up about iPods and cell phones and lightweight camping equipment). And we want this for under ten dollars?

Rant over. I'm off to St. John's, Newfoundland, tomorrow and hope to do some good skulking around its bookish offerings. Recommendations welcome.