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I’m in the wrong business…

Disclaimer: This post is only very barely, just kind of a little tiny bit, related to anything in the world of technology. If that bothers you, stop reading now. :)

Moose Muffin bookA while back, someone gave our daughter Kylie a present--a book called If You Give A Pig A Pancake. This slender book quickly became one of her favorites, probably because of the large illustrations on each page.

So we were out doing the weekly shopping on Saturday, and noticed another book by the same author. This one's called If You Give A Moose A Muffin. Knowing how much she liked the other one, we casually tossed the moose book in the cart and proceeded to check out. We get home, and sure enough, Kylie thinks this one's a winner too.

Then last night, I'm entering the shopping receipt into Quicken, and I nearly choked when I saw what we paid for the book--$15.99! Amazon has it cheaper, of course, but it's still not inexpensive...especially when you realize what you get for the money:

32 pages, including the inside cover, and a total of 304 words.

Using Amazon's price, that's about 3.5 cents per word (or 5.3 cents per word for what we paid). By itself, that may not sound like too much. But had my Panther book, at 174,907 words, been priced similarly, it would have retailed for ... $6,121.75 (or $9,270 at 5.3 cents/word)! Zowie! On the other hand, if we could have sold even two or three at that price... ;)

Now, in all seriousness, this is a great book with funny text and wonderful full-page color illustrations, which probably accounts for the majority of the cost. Still, I've learned two things from this. First, always check the tag on a children's book before throwing it in the cart--the thickness of the book is clearly independent from the price of said book. And second, I'm going to put the other "Give A..." books on Kylie's Christmas list right now!

18 thoughts on “I’m in the wrong business…”

  1. I love Amazon. I'm a [non-Mac] author, and one day I noticed that they were selling my [$14.95] book for almost $60.00! But then, that shouldn't be too surprising, since they've also tried to co-sell my book with girls' dolls and list the illustrator as the author. :-D

  2. Rob, I remember another book called "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" that I read and I don't recall one before it. Thus, I think it might be the original. The others began popping up a while after I had read IYGAMAC.

  3. Maybe you should write "If you give a girl an Apple." I'll illustrate it nicely for you and split the profits!

  4. Your daughter might also like If you take a mouse to school and . They are probably both as pricey, but our son has really enjoyed them all (which we certainly paid more than $15.99 for, as we purchased these two while in England where they probably set us back £15.99).

  5. Sorry, I tried to use basic HTML in my last post and lost a bit of it. Here are the two titles:
    "If you take a mouse to school"
    and
    "If you give a mouse a cookie"

  6. Rob. You said it yourself - wonderful full-page colour illustrations. As a publisher of children's books in the UK, I can say that the author earns about 20% of the total creative costs - the rest is the illustrator. That's why they're called picture books. Still, I'm delighted that your daughter loves the book - any book... It's amazing, and sad, that over 80% of kids in the West go to bed without a story.

  7. Rob. My wife and I have found that many of the new books are much more expensive then those classics of yesteryear. For our daughter Kaya we have ended up buying many books first published 40 some years ago or more. There is also an added bonus. If you enjoyed being read to as a child then you'll get a real kick out of these trips down memory lane which you can share with your children. Also check out The Strand Bookstore which has new/used/old titles/new titles generally cheaper then else where.

  8. 32 pages, all full-color. if "a picture is worth a thousand words" then you can probably add about 1500 or so to your word count - I'm guessing that each spread has an illustration?

  9. Chick-fil-a restaurants was giving away smaller sized versions of all the "Give a ..." books with their kids meals. It's the same 32 page story, but reduced in size to fit in a kids meal bag. Don't know if this is the current promotion.

  10. Haha Rob you are so funny. I am almost done writing my thesis. I would be happy if someone wants to pay a cent a word for it (oh if someone does, let me insert war and peace in the middle) :)

  11. I realize that you're being somewhat facetious, but number of words really doesn't equate to quality. People seem to think that children's books must be 'easy' to write since they're "simplistic" and consist of mainly illustration. A quality children's book takes skill and talent to craft in a manner that's age-appropriate and engaging for both the child and the adult that may be reading it to them.

    Oh, and you end up spending close to nothing for the experience of reading many, many wonderful children's books if you simply avail yourself of your local library. ;-)

  12. Yea, I was being heavily facetious. The books are quite amazing; the illustrations are very well done. Still, $15.99 gets your attention on a 32 page volume :).

    We tried the library a couple times ... but the problem is that she likes to read these books (not just these two, but her faves) over and over and over and ... she didn't really get this whole "give it back" thing. So we try not to buy too many, and we're working on teaching the concept of reading and returning. :)

    -rob.

  13. I noted Darin's comment (number 4, above) about the (supposedly) high prices in Briain and checked Amazon.co.uk to find:

    1. If You Give a Mouse a Cookie & If You Give a Moose a Muffin: Literature Unit ~ Deborah Shepherd-Hayes, Kathy Bruce (Illustrator) -- (Paperback - January 1998)
    Our Price: £4.59 Used & New from £2.26

  14. My kids love those books. I think you are paying for the illustrations. I agree those kids books are pricey. We usually end up in the library at least once a week. If you take her during story times she probably will love the library.

  15. Ah, I didn't realize you had text files of the book. I wonder if there is somewhere on the Internet that will tell you the word count of a book. Amazon and Google Books both search words inside of books, so they both should be able to.

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