This seems really quite confused in its message.

> Yes, the original price of To Kill a Mockingbird and Tolkien’s Fellowship were just $3.95 and $5. But those are nominal values. When we factor inflation, the picture changes dramatically. In today’s dollars—and you can run this exercise yourself—those cover prices would look more like $43 and $54.

I mean, yeah that's too expensive...

> Now compare that to housing, healthcare, or admission to sporting events, movies, and concerts

that's a pretty wild set of things to compare to..

> Don’t blame books for being too expensive. Everything else is more expensive, and that’s why you can’t afford books.

so they are _indeed_ too expensive, but it's not their fault?

> When people say they want cheap books, they forget there are many other interested players at the table: authors, agents, publishers, bookstores, book distributors, and so on.

I genuinely don't care about the middlemen and supply chain, the very expectation that a book purchase comes after careful and deliberate consideration of all the tertiary factors and relevant economic forces only reenforces the idea that *books are too expensive*

> I spent over a decade at Thomas Nelson Publishers.

There you go...

I would say I'm an avid reader and spend a lot more than the average person on books, but prices are absolutely wild. When you start comparing them to movies, sporting events and concerts (healthcare!?!) you're putting them appropriately in the category of big indulgence.