Ian Shaw's latest book, Into the Sunset, may be Canberra's most expensive new release

Canberra author Ian Shaw's latest book Into the Sunset: Emmett Dalton and the End of the Dalton Gang, which comes out next week, retails (as a hardcover) in Australia for $217.75.

Shaw's other books are all listed with recommended retail prices around $32. They're all focused on Australian history, and published by Australian publishers.

Meanwhile, this latest release focuses on American history and is published by the University Press of Kansas. And in the United States, a hardcover copy of the book will set you back US$69.95 ($105.56).

"I have no real idea why the book is so expensive in Australia. All I can think of is that there is a little freight and a lot of duty tacked onto the prices," Shaw says.

"But the target audience is the good folk of Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Missouri, northwestern Texas, and northeastern Arkansas. That's 80 million people. And I write for an Australian reading audience of 26 million. So it's exciting from that perspective."

Into the Sunset tells the story of Emmett Dalton, who in 1892, was part of one of the last major outlaw gangs and caught up in a gun battle in Coffeyville, Kansas. It saw eight men die and three others seriously injured, including Dalton who was captured with 23 bullet and buckshot wounds.

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After serving 14 years in prison, he published two accounts of his exploits (both made into movies) and became some what of a celebrity working with Hollywood cowboys.

"One of the bizarre things I learned was that in the 1910s, he was in Hollywood working with William S. Hart, and Tom Mix, the original Hollywood cowboys, showing them how real outlaws in the old west behave," Shaw says.

"There was none of this fancy shooting and all that. And I thought, well, here's a guy who was a member of the last the great Western outlaw gangs in Hollywood teaching guys who grew up in New York how to be a cowboy."

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