I travelled in the UK and in the US, and I felt that classic books were similarly priced there. In France, for books, there is quite often a cycle of "first edition with luxury components around the 20 bucks mark, followed by a pocket edition a year later around the 9 bucks mark".

For traditional french comic books, the price is France is I think higher than what I observed in the US and UK.

This is partly due to traditional culture where french publishers prefer full color editions needing more work ( where in the rest of the world we're happily mixing colors and white and black), and partly due too I suppose to a lack of incentive to lower prices when the demand is so high at the moment.

Second hand books are a total free market, and are very popular items.