But first this important (non) commercial message.

My next post was going to be about efficient space travel, but first I'd like to complain. Here we are, the Canadian dollar is at $1.07 US (apparently a high in "modern times" according to the CBC - how odd that records on the exchange rate in 1066 are unavailable), and a wide variety of stores are announcing price cuts in order to reflect this state of affairs. And yet, AND YET, trot into the book store of your choice and you will be offered the opportunity to pay 30% more than the American price on paperbacks and hardcovers of all descriptions.

The odd thing is that this is a problem unique to the publishing industry. What other product has the price printed on the item? DVD's, music CD's, software, even computers, there's a myriad of products that could have the price printed on the package, but no one else has elected to do so.

I've been waiting to see if cover prices would start to reflect the declining US dollar, but no, new books arriving on the shelves continue to show the same enormous gap in pricing. So, screw 'em - no new book purchases for a while, unless I happen to make a trip down to Seattle.

- Sid

Postscript: I went into Chapters this afternoon to kill some time and noticed that there was a polite little sign at the bottom of the escalator commenting on the above situation. This explanatory missive pointed out that there were other factors in play other than just the exchange rate, that customers offering to pay in US dollars would still be charged the Canadian price (ha, someone must have had fun with that idea, I'll admit that the thought had occurred to me already) and that the six month lead time on book publishing makes it impossible for the prices printed on books to reflect the current exchange rate.

"Thanks for shopping Canadian!"

Fair enough...let's do a little research, then.

My copy of Wasteland of Flint, printed in 2004, cost $7.99 US, $10.99 Canadian. Exchange rate: $1.37 C to the US dollar in May. If you do the math, these relative prices are almost exactly the same - the exact conversion of the US price is $10.9463 Canadian.

2005: Illium, $7.99 US, $10.99 Canadian, exchange rate $1.24 C/US$.

2006: Olympos, $7.99 US, $10.99 Canadian, exchange rate $1.13 C/US$.

2007: Meeting at Corvallis, $7.99 US, $10.99 Canadian, exchange rate $1.10 in May.
At that rate, the converted price would be exactly $8.789 Canadian.

(May is the magic month because that's the six month lead time for printing to which Chapters refers, as we sit here in November.)

In other words, Chapters would like me to believe that in spite of a 27 cent difference in the dollar's exchange rate over a four year period, the Canadian price relative to the US price hasn't changed by a cent? And we're not even looking at the rate today, which has the US dollar worth $0.92 Canadian, for a converted price per book of $7.35 Canadian.

Somebody's making money at this - and at the expense (literally) - of the consumer. I'm not sure who it is, though! Let's be fair, Chapters isn't putting the prices on the books, the American publishers are. The question becomes one of whether the wholesale price that Chapters pays for the books is based on the US price or the Canadian price. If Chapters get the US price, they're laughing all the way to the bank. If they're paying a Canadian dollar price, they're getting shafted as badly as we are. I wonder which it is...

- Sid