So why not get it down to the essential point: What does "relatively" mean?

1.: What do I want, good translation quality (=even readable sentences may be something great depending on the publisher, right? ), good paper quality, good editing, redrawn sfx?
2.: How much is the average income in the given country? (and I'm not talking about students, but actual working people )
3.: How does it compare to usual books?
4.: How does it compare to other countries?
5.: Is the price reasonable with the given market for manga -> obviously japanese publishers can go with much cheaper prices per volume if they sell 5-50(?) times what U.S. publishers would sell.

In my personal case, I'm a sucker for quality, so I usually buy the U.S. version of a volume, even if it's availlable from a local publisher. Twice the price (12-15 € for a viz volume in contrast to 5-7 € per local volume) and yet I think it's totally reasonable. And much better at that, I've seen more than enough local volumes with totally obvious redraws and totally lousy texts -> 2-3 € would have been more than enough for that garbage.

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Just one of your random oldies

I live in Cape Verd (It´s 10 islands in the atlantic ocean), you can't buy manga here, just the shipping cost from the company that send manga here is between 20 and 40 euros, and you can't always be sure that it will get here.

what?! since when does barnes and noble sell ANYTHING for 99 cents? actually i've yet to even see a yaoi manga in my local b&n.

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;D

Yeah, I'm living in Australia and the price for manga is overly expensive, given what it is and how quickly it can be read. Not that I've had an extensive look, but never in my life have I seen manga in a bookstore (chains). I tend to purchase mine from online companies like Booktopia. I used to order through the Book Depository, they're cheaper and have free shipping but their customer service is pretty poor. Apparently it's just impossible to change the shipping address... As for Amazon, well, I only use it if I have to. It's utterly ridiculous that I should be paying more for shipping than the actual book itself.

The problem in Australia is that English language publishers are in USA and it costs Australian companies to import the books, therefore the the prices of the books are inflated.You'd like to think that things would be different with AUD being worth more than USD at the moment, but no.

I live in Bangkok Thailand. Minimum wages is 250-300 baht(Thai currency)(=10 US$)per day(8 hours worktime) very low isn't it? Yes we are third world country. Average licensed or pirated manga prices here is 45-60 baht(1.5-2 US$), printed in newsprint paper, acceptable binding.It use to be 10-15 baht for one copy 20 years ago but that is the time when every j manga was pirated print.