Last-minute Halloween trick
How's this for a Halloween trick? Amid the online book price war being fought by Walmart, Amazon and Target -- which drove the price of upcoming best-sellers below $9 -- the mega-retailers are limiting the number of copies customers can buy. The move could be a response to a threat by indie booksellers to stop buying from publishers and starting buying in bulk at the stores.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Walmart has limited online customers to two copies of certain bargain books, Amazon.com has a three-copy maximum on certain discounted titles and Target Corp. has a five-copy limit online. The price war involves the top 10 hottest book pre-orders.
Taking a closer look at book pricing, Publishers Weekly says that "based on the published discount schedules of the major publishers, there is no way Amazon and Wal-Mart can profitably sell the 10 titles that are being discounted. The highest published discounts offered by publishers for new titles is 48% for books shipped to retail distribution centers; retailers can earn a 50% discount for books bought nonreturnable. The discounts offered by Wal-Mart to customers for books it prices at $8.98, however, range from 74% (Under the Dome, list $35) to 59% (Ice, list $22), which would mean Wal-Mart is losing $8.52 on Dome and $2.02 on Ice."
The price war has led an association of independent booksellers to call for a Justivce Department investigation of alleged "predatory pricing."
While she always preferred The Hardy Boys to Nancy Drew, 
Comments
Books, unlike other commodities, have a price listed right on the book - and it is set by the publisher. Because publishers use this amount to set the cost to the bookseller, this limits the amount of profit anyone - from Amazon to your local corner bookstore - can make. This ALSO sets the royalties for the authors.
What will happen as the larger stores succeed due to their price war --- and smaller stores go bankrupt because they cannot compete --- is that you will see less royalties and fewer and fewer authors and publishers entering the market. Unless something drastic changes, new authors will not be able to sell their books at all for any price in any venue. Finding older, classic authors such as Edgar Rice Burroughs will only be possible in used book format.
Is this the kind of reading environment you want to live in?
Disclaimer - I own a small indie bookstore. (And yes, I am already having a hard time tracking down Rice Burroughs for his loyal fans.)
Posted by: Lauretta(ConstellationBooks) | November 1, 2009 12:11 PM