This is old news by now, but in case you didn't know, the American Bookseller's Association has requested that the U.S. Department of Justice investigate pricing schemes by Amazon, Target, and Walmart that it believes to be illegal and predatory. Here's a link to the letter.
Apparently these three retail giants have been selling best-selling hardcovers for $9 or less. The cover price on these titles, which include works by Stephen King, John Grisham, and James Patterson, range from $35 to $25 dollars. Typically retailers get a discount of 45-50%, which means that the retailers are eating a significant loss on each title sold. The letter from the ABA describes the steeply discounted books as loss-leaders for the retailer, and also charges that the three retailers are seeking to monopolize the hardcover bestseller market.
The ABA also says that the current price war between Target, Walmart, and Amazon was kicked off by Amazon pricing electronic editions of new hardcovers at $9.99, and requests that the Dept. of Justice look into that as well.
I'm reserving comment for now, because there are so many conflicting sides to this. But it should be interesting to see how it pans out.
What I found funny was the number of indie bookstores who started ordering their stock from Amazon and Walmart instead of from their regular distributors because it was cheaper!
Posted by: Steven Harper Piziks | November 03, 2009 at 09:51 PM