Hi, guys. I have what might come across as a silly question, but it’s been bugging me all day, so here goes.
I work in a bookstore (in the US), and about 95% of our books have both US and Canadian prices marked on them (and sometimes prices for other English-speaking countries as well). I always assumed that publishers didn’t distinguish between the two countries, otherwise, why would they bother noting both prices? Anyway, the other day, I snagged a free copy of The Basque History of the World by Mark Kurlansky from a Random House order (one can do this when the publisher accidentally sends us books we didn’t order, which happens more than you might think). The cover looked slightly different from the copies of the book that we carry in my store, and when I looked at it closely, I realized that it was the Canadian edition. The only price listed was Canadian, or so I assume ($21.95 for a paperback?).
So Canadians, please enlighten me. Do most of your books have both prices, or just the Canadian? It also occurs to me that spelling sometimes differs between the two countries, but a cursory glance of my Canadian book shows that they didn’t change anything (Mark Kurlansky is American).
Well, you ask a silly question, you get a silly answer.
Books that are available in both countries have both US and Canadian prices listed on them (this is the majority here, too), and books meant solely for the Canadian market (either “Canadian edition” textbooks that have some Canadian-centric facts added or locally published works) only have the Canadian price.
The reason why there are two prices is due to the exchange rate. What is it now, like one Canadian dollar gets you a phone call from a US payphone? Anyways, it’s cheaper to print one cover for all markets than it is to print a different cover, especially when the contents are unchanged. I’ve yet to see any American-authored paperback using “centre” or “colour”…
$21.95 is a bit steep for a paperback, though. I’m assuming it’s a textbook? In which case, it’s quite reasonable. Personally, I blame the metric system.
Yes, most books in Canada have both US and Canadian prices on them. This is because more often than not the printing is done in one country (usually the US) and then shipped to both countries.
Where it gets really interesting is in the area of magazines. With magazines, which are for the most part paid for through advertising, this means that Canadians get something of a free ride when accessing American culture. The US market drives production, so printing off a relatively few extra copies for Canada is no big deal. But in another sense, it makes things difficult for Canadian writers and magazine publishers, for it means having to directly compete against a product which does not have to attract much if any Canadian advertising to still be profitable. At first blush this may not seem to be that big a problem, for there is no reason at all why one should expect Canada to develop as big a publishing industry as the US, but down at the writer’s level, it is a very big problem, for the domination of the magazine rack by US magazines means that it is excessively difficult for Canadians to become published in their own country.
Since writing is often directly tied up with culture and identity, there is concern that such inequities help assimilate Canadian culture into American culture.
Obviously I have only presented a very brief outline with a very broad brush, and what I have put forward could be disputed on a number of grounds, but I think that it does serve as an introduction to some of the problems Canada and the Canadian publishing industry face.
So no, your question about dual prices on books is not silly at all.
Thank you for your answers. My Basque History appears to be published by the Vintage Canada. Vintage is an imprint of Random House, and I guess they have a Canadian division. Everything now makes sense except for why they even bothered. The cover is a little different, but the actual book appears to be identical to the one we carry in my store. I’m thinking that it would be cheaper to publish only one version, so they must have some obscure reason for doing this. Or they are stupid. (Based on experience, I would have to say this is a possibility. Of course, if they weren’t, I wouldn’t have the book in the first place.)
The really sad part is marking the fall of the Cdn dollar through book prices. My paperbacks from the 70s show about a 10 percent difference in price… and now they’re more like 30 to 50 percent. Ouch!
As other posters have noted, it is often easier and less expensive to print books for both Canada and the US. Generally, these books use American spellings, even if sold in Canada.
But overseas, it can be surprising what you can find. Once, when I was in Australia, I needed something to read. I picked up a Stephen King (Different Seasons, for those of you who are interested), and all of the spelling was British English: rumour, cheque, theatre, and so on. The copyright page said that that edition was only for sale in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and other English-speaking countries, but not in the US or Canada.
I must say, it was an interesting experience to read King after the spelling had been changed. Of course, I’m used to the King books one gets in Canada, with American spellings. But if you’re, say, Australian, and you’ve only read King and other Americans after the original spelling has been changed to the spellings you’re used to, you wouldn’t notice a thing–unless you picked up an American/Canadian edition.
What, is the reader too dumb to figure it out? King is an American writer. Why not read his books in American English? If I read a book by, oh, say, John Wyndham, I want to read it in the language (right down to the cheques and theatres) that it was written in.
Before anyone pipes up, translations are a different issue entirely, since it usually says “Translation by Mortimer Snerd” in large, friendly letters on the cover. Changing color to colour (or vice versa) is just stealthy, patronizing, unnecessary, and weird.
Okay, this post is more GD with shades of Pit than GQ, so I’ll actually ask a question:
Is “in the hospital” changed to “in hospital,” “truck” to “lorry”, and “line” to “queue”? Are the periods moved outside the quotation marks?
