I appreciuate the responses. I do. My concern though is why authors charge an arm and a leg for something that might be 50% useful at best.
It depends largely on the book and the author. There are plenty of books in the standard $15-30 range, from people like Jason Miller teaching basics.
The expensive books are usually either rare out of print books (especially out of print rare, old editions) or really big academic books that hold a
lot more value than the average chapter book.
Those like Dr. Stephen Skinner, for example, spend years working on their big books that cost $50 or $60. They travel to different countries, have to go through special processes to get access to library archives, and dig up medieval manuscripts of unpublished grimoires or unpublished versions of known grimoires. Then they have to spend a lot of time and effort translating the grimoire into usable modern English, go through the editing and publishing process, and try to hold a standard of high quality hardcover books that are meant to be intensely studied for years.
After the higher quality material costs, publisher cut, and other expenses authors usually only make a single digit percentage in royalties. And publishing in a niche like occultism doesn’t lend to great profits with such small margins.
So really, usually, the high cost is just the cost of publishing a good well made book.
And because they do that hard work anyway, we end up with to access valuable tomes that have remained buried sometimes for centuries. Things like The Goetia of Dr. Rudd or the complete Ars Notoria. Skinner even published the very first real book on Feng Shui in English decades ago.
But there are a lot of resources available online for free.
And like I said, check your library. If you’re in the US, they can check the Interlibrary Loan network, and if any public library in the entire US has a book you want they’ll ship it to you for free and let you check it out normally for free with your library card. There’s surely something similar in other countries with decent public library systems.
Those big books are not meant for people who find them 50% useful, so you don’t have to pursue them out of obligation. Unless you have a special interest in serious grimoire tradition, or things like the PGM, most books you probably don’t need to pay more than $30 for and plenty you can find used for $12 or less.