There are two reasons for your high price:
First, the paper book publishing market continues to shrink.
For example, in 2020, the book industry experienced negative growth for the first time. Although it was affected by the epidemic, it did illustrate the decline of the book publishing market. Moreover, as people's time is occupied by high-intensity work and diversified media, on the one hand, everyone's reading time is compressed, on the other hand, book sales are often polarized. The more famous the author or book, the greater the sales, and vice versa.
The head office is ok, but the operating pressure of many local publishing houses continues to increase. Publishing books at one's own expense has always been the focus of publishing houses' profits, because only serious publishing houses can apply for ISBN in China, and even publishing companies as big as Motie need to cooperate with publishing houses to publish books.
Second, the chaos in the self-funded publishing industry has led to a sharp decline in the number of ISBN approvals.
Due to the scandal of "Ping An Jing", the country has greatly reduced the examination and approval of ISBN in the past two years. To what extent? I just chatted with an editor of a former publishing house. A publishing house and a department can get more than a dozen book numbers from the country a year. Therefore, the sharp decline in trading volume will inevitably affect the income of publishing houses.
At present, the so-called self-funded publishing is often the behavior of some small non-head publishing houses or the personal behavior of editors. They often have little market influence and it is difficult for them to benefit from market distribution. Coupled with lax management in many places, book publishing has no market and social benefits. Usually 30,000-40,000 can be done.