Speculation, Fact and Fiction

I've been doing accounts today. Which brings to my notice the fact that I paid half-price or so, for every book I bought for non-work pleasure reading over the last two months. That's the latest paperbacks by Ruth Rendell, Sara Paretsky, Robert Crais, Sue Grafton, Alexander McCall Smith, John Harvey and Manda Scott. Bought variously from WHSmiths, Waterstones and Borders.

All of these are excellent writers I've been reading for years, paying the full list price for their books and considering that money well spent.
Nowadays, I'd have to make a special trip to find anywhere where I could even attempt to pay the full price for their books.

So I suppose all I can do by way of compensation is offer to buy them a drink, if I ever encounter any of them at some writerly get-together.

A pal who works in the computer games industry commented to me recently he thinks publishing is mad. At the point of peak demand for a new product, the price is halved. Then, as demand goes down, the price goes up. The computer industry does very nicely doing the exact opposite.