Charles Robinson, a bookshop owner from Atlanta, asked Marketplace this question:

You may not be able to judge a book by its cover, but you will know how much it costs.

Pick up any book on your shelf that was published in modern times and you'll see a suggested retail price, often printed on the back, near or inside the bar code.

Like Robinson observed, it's a feature that's not commonly seen on other retail products. Potato chips and books are extremely odd in this regard. Other commodities might be labeled with a tag or a sticker, but the cost is not usually printed on the product itself, giving stores more power to set their own pricing.

Some scholars also have a theory that they think encouraged the uniform printing of prices: the existence of book cartels.

Jonathan Senchyne and Michael Winship say price fixing could have helped influence this practice's popularity.

"So publishers and booksellers kind of form an agreement around 1900 - both in England and in the United States - to not discount books," Senchyne said. "And the big and powerful publishers essentially all agree to not stock booksellers who discount prices."

In the U.K. and Ireland, it was known as the Net Book Agreement, which operated up until 1990, according to Senchyne.

Winship said that in America, this practice was specifically aimed at Macy's. "The department stores were buying in huge quantities at great discounts, and selling them to customers below the price," he said.

Senchyne said while he doesn't have hard evidence that price fixing systems are exactly why prices are published on the covers of books, he'd wager it's a reason given the mix of developments occurring at the turn of the 20th century - like the rise of publishers' bindings and retail as we know it today.

The role of paperback novels and comicsPrice listing on the front cover of books has also been a mainstay of mass paperback novels, which Kilmarx calls "the common person's book, so to speak."

In the 1860s, the American publisher Irwin P. Beadle & Company began printing mass paperback novels and labeled them as "Beadle's Dime Novels" on their covers, which sold for, obviously, 10 cents. In effect, price and branding became intertwined.

"The Dime Novel was born in an attempt by the publishers Erastus and Irwin Beadle to make money on inexpensive, ephemeral literature," wrote the librarian and historian Marc Carlson.

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Why do books have prices printed on them?(https://www.marketplace.org/2021/01/21/why-do-books-have-prices-printed-on-them/)