Good News For Book Prices in Canada, The surging Canadian dollar is prompting book publishers to slash the prices of their new offerings later this year in the wake of consumer complaints.
“Book prices are going down. I can say that for sure,” said Kevin Hanson, president of Simon & Schuster Canada, one of the country’s largest book publishers.
Duh!
Since the Canadian dollar has soared against the US dollar over the past year, the prices publishers are printing on books are outrageous, having been calculated for a CAD $1 = USD $0.66 world, when we’re living in a CAD $1 = USD $0.89 world. For example, a computer book I purchased recently has the following prices printed on it:
which implies an exchange rate of $0.71. That’s definitely better than the old rate of $0.66, but at the current exchange rate, the Canadian price should have been $55.95. A $14 premium is a bit much. In fact, it’s probably cheaper to buy from an American source than a Canadian source right now, even with the fees that shippers charge to broker things across the border.