RRPs are rising but books have never been cheaper

In January, thanks to a sale of 467,000 copies in its first week on shelves, Prince Harry's Spare (Bantam) became the fastest-selling nonfiction book since Nielsen BookData's official sales records began in the late 1990s. With a £28 recommended retail price (RRP), it is one of the most expensive books to have topped the weekly bestseller lists, and certainly one of most expensive memoirs - beaten only by Barack Obama's A Promised Land (£35 RRP), which spent three weeks at number one in the run-up to Christmas 2020.

High advances will no doubt be a factor behind the relatively expensive RRPs for both, but market forces (Brexit, the rising costs of paper, energy, and manufacturing, the pandemic) are forcing all publishers to reconsider RRPs generally. And, at the same time, book-buyers are of course facing similar pressures of their own.