To some people, buying books is more of a luxury because not all can afford to buy books. Books are expensive. In some countries, only those who are in the middle to top class of their society can afford to buy books. Students are also having a hard time buying books; to some, it causes them their education. This has been a long-time problem of most of the countries.
The question is why are books expensive?
Let’s narrow it down to these obvious answers.
Paper is expensive. The law of supply and demand, if the demand is high but the supply is low the price will increase. We abused cutting down trees the past decades and we now feel the effects of this, since we couldn’t afford to cut some more trees more the necessary.
Book is a business. At the end of it all the publisher needs to consider that a published books needs to cover the costs of the following: the author, the publisher, the marketing agency, the graphic designer, printing, distribution and of course taxes.
Taxes played a vital role on book cost. It has been an on-going debate as to whether books need to be taxed. On a few countries books aren’t taxed because they see it as a necessity.
This may not be a problem of the readers but to authors as well. Book authors only profit a little portion on book sales especially those new writers. If this is the case many of the book authors will be discouraged on authoring books while the readers will be discouraged on buying books because it is expensive.
Is there a solution to this dilemma?
Supply chain solutions may help the thriving book business. What is a supply chain solution? It is the management of the flow of goods and services, involves the movement and storage of raw materials, of work-in-process inventory, and of finished goods from point of origin to point of consumption.
There are lot of companies that offers supply chain solutions. This has been an option to lot of businesses nowadays. For books, there are some supply chain solutions printing companies that also offers overseas book printing as well as digital and offset printing.
So how supply chain solutions works on book printing? It is reinventing the traditional book printing. It is basically a print on demand process through supply chain solutions. It is cost efficient compared to the traditional book printing process. With the help of supply chain solutions you can order to print only by the demanded quantity. By this process or method it can lessen the loss of profit. On other companies, they even offer inventories, storage and shipping it overseas.
In terms of marketing, some supply chain solutions companies include e-commerce on their services. This is exciting news in the world of book printing and publishing. This could be the hope for the issue of book prices.
It’s about time that books will no longer be considered as a luxury. Everybody deserves to have, if not free, reasonable prices of books.