Reading between the lines of book buying

Close to 206,000 books were published in the UK in 2005; US and China followed with 172,000 and 136,266 in 2005 and 2007 respectively. With so many new books and so little time, time-poor book enthusiasts might be having trouble with the marginal analyses of their book-related costs and benefits in the face of the scarcity that some simply understand as "not enough time".

In layperson's terms, marginal analysis refers to weighing the benefits against the costs of any extra action. In this case, will buying our next book delight us with more benefit than the costs that we bore to find, buy and read it? And what is an economically sound way of doing this in Beijing?

First, there is the search cost: the time it took us to go to the bookstore, find our book after wasting some more time in the bookstore, and finally, transportation to and from the bookstore, if any. Then there is the money cost, or the price of a book. And finally, the opportunity cost of reading, or whatever gains we lost in the time we spent reading. These are the costs.