Rocky,
I said “if there is competition”. Book and bookstore market may not be so good, so you might be right. But also keep in mind, costs of developing a book, especially with a translation, are high. So, maybe sponsors enable publishing more books than would otherwise published.
If you are looking for affordable English seforim, search amazon books and click on “used only”. You get good conditioned books at < $10 each. I found out about this when the kids gave me a present of multiple of my favorite seforim and I wondered how they were able to afford that 🙂