The Spiderwick Chronicles - Grrr...

I'm not sure how the packaging/marketing decision was made. I think I paid $40 for the set in a gift box a year ago. Someone at a conference mentioned that it's actually an in-between packaging--more expensive than a paperback, but cheaper than a full-on hardback with a dust jacket.

And I don't know, my boys and I loved them. My 8-year-old read them all last summer. If they'd been combined into one longer, larger book, he wouldn't have. He's still at the age where he can read well, but only if it's short. 100 pages doesn't scare him, but anything over that does. So they've reached more kids this way.

Plus the art is such a key factor. A single book, with that level of illustration, might have been too expensive to sell. I don't know.

There's something to be said, though, for keeping it short. My son picked it up and read it on his own accord, and finished it and the series, all on his own without any prompting from me. He's also 8.

There's a sense of accomplishment for him, bragging rights if you will, for the fact that he finished all the books, and zoomed through them so quickly. So now he's looking for other books to read, which however you cut it, is a good thing.

I concur that I would think that these are smaller for a reason. (Like the series of unfortunate events). They are more geared to the younger and the more easily distracted. Most young folks won't go through the larger books.

Simple Living said:

I paid $10.99 for a very small, albeit cute, book of 106 little pages. If those 106 pages were formatted in the same way as regular books, it would be a single chapter in length.

Click to expand...

Regular books for who? It's not a flip question, either. If you mean "regular kids books" then I'm all for sympathizing with you over what may well be a marketing ploy. If we're taking into account the appropriate age group and "regular" format of books geared at that group.

On the other hand, if you're thinking of "regular" as in books geared for either young adults (Harry Potter, ostensibly) or the like, then I'm going to take issue with the statement and point out, as others have, that what's a proper formatting for a book aimed at the 10 year old or younger crowd is not the same as what's proper for then 14 and up crowd.

Children's books are expensive, if you're looking at page number and word count, than say novels are, but I think most would agree that sort of comparison would be an "apples to oranges" issue.

The printing costs were pretty high because of the quality of the paper and the art repro.