We’ve posted a couple of times on the book price wars (for 10 titles) between Wal-Mart, Amazon.com, and now Target. This post has an intro, a list of titles, and some comparison pricing while this post has info about Target’s entry into the war.
One thing we noticed but did not blog about is that soon after Wal-Mart and Amazon matched at the $9.00 price point, Wal-Mart lowered their price to $8.99. Now, after Target has joined the fray at 8.99, Wal-Mart fired back at $8.98. Just how low can they go? (-:
It’s a contest “that has no end in sight,” said Michael Norris, an analyst with Simba Information, which provides research and advice to publishers. Mr. Norris said the price war could be particularly damaging to booksellers because they could not afford to discount that heavily, while the retailers who were slashing prices “don’t need to sell books in order to stay in business” and therefore can sell the books at a loss.
“Obviously, authors don’t own our physical books, just the words inside, so we have no control over how they’re sold,” [Author] Ms. [Barbara] Kingsolver said. “But we can ask our readers to consider how much they value their local bookstores. If this price war is another way of using volume discounts to put independent booksellers out of business, then every thoughtful reader is going to lose in the long run.”
Source: NY Times
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, October 21st, 2009 and is filed under Information Industry.
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