Board Thread:News and Announcements/@comment-1173941-20130824011028/@comment-26391060-20131010174236

I find it interesting to compare price of different version of books in different place...

Take SAO 11 as an example

Japanese version on Amazon Japan:578JPY (5.89USD)

Japanese version in local(i.e.Hong Kong) book store:578*0.125=72.3HKD(9.32USD)

Extra addition of price over original:58%

Traditional Chinese version (for taiwan/hk) published by taiwan publishers:200NTD(6.8USD)

and its labelled price in terms of HKD: 55HKD(7.1USD)

extra addition of price:4.2%

Simplified Chinese version (for mainland china) labelling price: 23RMB(3.76usd)(neglecting that china online book store frequently provide discount like buy one get two free)

local simplified chinese book store selling the book at:35HKD(4.5usd)

addition of price:20%

as sao11 still not yet have english version, so let use another manga's price to compare

listed price: 11.99USD/12.99CAD(12.5usd)

locally selling price: 120.0HKD(15.47USD)

29% addition of price(originally the manga japanese version was about 500-600yen)

Some interesting point to note after I typed all this out:

1.The particular japanese book store i frequently visited seemed to be way overpriced - they get books from marine but some other japanese magazine store even they get their product via aviation they won't charge as much as 58% above original

2.Seems like logistical distance have little impact over how books are priced when they are away from where they published. in term of distance it should be mainland china closest to HK and then TW and JP and USA but at the end...

3.Mainland China publishers (in fact branches of kadokawa) selling books even cheaper than original japanese version quite a bit... even thought they need to obtain the license and translate

4.However there seems to be a relation between publishers location and Japan...