The Profit-Driven Life

I know I'm not the only person who hasn't read The Purpose-Driven Life, though its sales have topped 30,000,000 copies. This is phenomenal for any book.
 
Those of us who've skipped it so far may simply be non-readers, or may be indifferent to Christian self-help, and some would rather be hung by their toes and fed Ex-Lax than read Christian self-help.

As for me and my house, it's fiction.  Or history.  Hell, I think I'd generally rather read High School Algebra 4U!  than any self-help book, and most Christian self-helpers I've tried said nothing deep, complex or...well....helpful.  To me.

But I'm a Book Person and feel both the need to know something about a book so huge-selling, and a personal curiosity as to what it might have to offer. So, armed with TWO delightful B&N gift cards received this Christmas, I thought, Hey, I could get an e-reader copy. And not pay any of my own money!

I've tried e-reading and still prefer real books, but e-reading can be great, especially in the dark of an insomniac night.  If I'm going to read self-help at all it will be then, deep in a sleepless night.

Come to find out that, though the book is years old, there's no lower-price this-has-been-around-awhile e-reader version for under 15 bucks.  Kindle's version is only slightly lower at almost $13, and I don't have a Kindle anyway, I have a Nook app.

I see many decade-old or older books that have come out in e-formats at mid-price range, $5-8 or so.  Not The Purpose-Driven Life.  Well, OK, it has too -- if I could read Spanish.  Spanish e-readers can have it for almost half of the English version's price, at 7.99.

If you're thinking this is either an anti-Spanish "We all pay more so fer-uh-ners can pay less!" rant, or a complaint about free market selling, you'd be wrong.

As a bookseller, I sell Bibles and Christian books for profit, and so I (grudgingly) have to allow publishers their right to do what I do.   Apparently, the publisher has priced the e-version at what they think they can get, and they seem to think they can get $8 from Spanish readers, but $15 from English readers.  They have a right to try.  I'd love to see sales plummet and see them shrug and say, OK, we screwed THAT up, and drop the price to something I have to call much more reasonable, considering that the e-version costs the publisher vastly less in materials, manufacture, storage or shipping.

The ball is in their court when they decide on a price.  Then it's in ours.

Any consumer can, and should say, "That's a rip-off" when they think it is one.  And I do.  It's OK, because this is a commodity for which I have options, like, it's not critical care medication, so I can live without it, and I actually can get it cheap if I change  formats and go to Goodwill for a hard copy instead.  The book shows up there fairly regularly, for 50 cents.

But I will point out those whose publishers offer reasonable prices on e-book versions, whether it's out of customer love or just what they think the market will bear:

Philip Yancey's Where Is God When it Hurts? is excellent and 5 bucks.

A Year with C. S. Lewis for 3.99 (as of this writing)

The Courage For Truth by Thomas Merton is geared particularly to writers, but there's a BUNCH of Merton available in e-format, priced from 7.99 to 9.99.

If these prices are good enough for Merton, Lewis and Yancey, it's hard to know why Warren is so much more costly, but hey, if people pay it, they're welcome to do that.