2013 - What's another year...

... or even rather more than one of them?

One hundred and fifty years back from January 01, 2013 - a piece of paper was signed in the not-quiteUnited (at that time, at least) States of America. A piece of paper - but by Presidential authority as commander in chief, it declared all in both the Union and Confederacy to be free. And one hundred and fifty years back from January 10, 2013, the London Underground (the world's oldest underground railway) opened. And these facts have, to the best of my knowledge, only one thing in common.

They have absolutely nothing to do with this blog post .

Or - maybe they do. Because the piece of paper signed in the not-quite-United States still has power. And the London Underground? It's still running. Well, apart from the days it isn't. But that's a different conversation .

Which brings me, perhaps by a rather circuitous route to what is the point. Of this blog post, I mean .

In March 1972, the UK pound was worth $2.65. Which probably doesn't mean much - at least not yet. But hold onto that number - we'll come back to it.

If you've been here before, you probably know I write. And one thing writers tend to do, to greater or lesser degrees, is read. And I was looking at some books the other day. I'll save some time - these were paper books. With, like, paper pages and paper covers. And they were on my shelves. Or perhaps I should say - still on my shelves. And they were all still on my shelves from about the same time, having lasted through multiple reads and multiple moves (at least one between countries). And they all had one thing (roughly) in common. Because I bought them all new in or around 1972.

Yes. Paperbacks really can last that long .

But what I found interesting about them wasn't that I still had them. Or that they were in the rather good condition they were in. Not even that none of the ones I happened to look at had anything to do with either the London Underground, or the Emanciptation Proclamation.

It was this:

OK. Now, at the time I bought these books, they didn't have US prices on them. It was probably something to do with Publishing agreements. Or, more likely, disagreements. Or Copyright. Or something. Actually, it was probably something to do with the same types of disagreements and arguments still going on today - but that's another conversation too . But a lot of my readers (well, a lot of the readers I sometimes tell myself I have ) are in the US. So I'm going to take that conversion rate from March 1972 - and do this:

And that's when it started getting interesting. For two reasons. Because those prices there? You can buy books for pretty close to those prices today. Yes - fourty (-ish) years later - book prices haven't changed a bit.

Which is, of course, total nonsense . You can't go and buy 'Time for the stars' at Amazon for anything like $0.80. In fact, when I looked it had a list price of $15.99. So why say what I did?

Because I said you can buy books. And you can. Because these days there are self-published authors and authors published by Independant Publishers - and they have books you can buy. Books you can buy at those fourty year old prices. And it's even better than that!

Er - what did he say?

He said 'And it's even better than that!'

And why's that?

Well - that's because even a dollar ain't what it used to be. I mean, yes, it used to be a dollar. But what you could buy for a dollar in 1972 wasn't what you could buy for a dollar today. No indeed. In fact, if you go here:

http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl

You can find out. You can find out that a dollar in 1972 would buy the same as - wait for it - $5.51 in 2012.

And you'd find out that a dollar today? Well, that would have bought the same as $0.18 in 1972.

So when you go to a self-published author's web site, or to their page on Amazon, or to an Independant Publisher's page, and you pay, say, a dollar for a book - you're getting a better deal than you'd have got fourty years ago. Up to five times better a deal. And how many things can you say that about? A five times better deal than fourty year old prices!

And yes. Some of those books might be better than others. But some of those authors? One day, people like my friends Angela Robbins, Cheryl Dale and Gail Roughton are going to be Robert Heinleins. Or Peter Benchleys. Or George MacDonald Frasers. Or Mary Stewarts. Or...

Well. You get the idea .

So. What's another year? Or even another fourty? Maybe - maybe it's time to read another damn good book. Or even another fourty... .

Oh. And I said two reasons. So what's the other one? Well - I tried some more of those books I have on my shelf. And you know what? A heck of a lot of them were out of print. And not even released in e-book form. But e-books don't need printing presses - they just need file servers. Because e-books, like diamonds, really can be forever.