And you from Anglo-Saxons countries are complaining about book prices !
Know that in France an average paperback book costs about 60 FF (around £6 or 8 USD) - and these are much smaller than your paperbacks : every Robert Jordan book, for example, has been split in 2 French paperbacks ...
And French paperbacks are much less solid too - after no more than one or two readings, pages start to fall away.
This is one of the reasons why I started reading Fantasy books in English, you know - even by buying them via Internet (and adding the delivery price), paperbacks still are much less expensive - plus, I don't have to wait for the French translation !
------------------
The world is my oyster !