A sign that the luxury industry is bouncing back is the growing demand for high-end books. Yes, there is a market for luxury books and people are buying books with luxury price tags.
What defines a luxury book and the right price to attract this type of buyer?
How much would you pay for a book?
Not for a rare book, a Shakespeare folio or a Gutenberg Bible to keep under glass, but for a volume simply to grace your bookshelves or your coffee table.
Would $199 be too much? Sports artist Dick Perez hopes that 5,000 people are willing to put out that amount for The Immortals, a collection of his portraits of Baseball Hall of Famers.
What about $461.62? That’s what online bookseller Amazon is asking for Microsoft executive-turned-chef Nathan Myhrvold‘s new, six-volume culinary compendium Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking.
How about $15,000, the publisher’s list price for the “Champ’s Edition” of GOAT: A Tribute to Muhammad Ali (Greatest of All Time), featuring more than 3,000 images, plus a small sculpture by Jeff Koons and four silver gelatin prints signed by photographer Howard L. Bingham and Ali? Or $4,500 for the “Collector’s Edition,” with a Koons photo-litho instead of the sculpture and without the silver gelatin prints?