Remarkable stability in book prices.

About 70 years ago, when I was a small boy, my first English book "Pinocchio" was bought for me. My mother read it to me as I was too young to read English then. It was an ordinary (imported) paperback & I had written the price on the title page as one & a half rupee.

The price of a sovereign was about Rs.20 then & a family could live comfortably on the same amount per month. Assuming the price of a sovereign now as Rs.30,000 & (optimistically) estimating monthly expenses of a family to be the same, the price of an imported paperback should now be more than Rs.2000! Though many books cost the same now, many more are priced even lower! So we can conclude that cost of books (as a fraction of Gold or expendable income) has actually reduced in real terms!

The same holds good for music also. A record holding 6-7 minutes of music would cost Rs.3, which would translate to more than Rs.4000 now, whereas an LP or CD holding 40-70 minutes music (of much better sound quality) would definitely cost less.

So as Dickens said now is "The best of times & worst of times" also!