The book price war stupidly continues
MOBYLIVES -- Ways to avoid price wars: Live in Europe
Wal-Mart and Target and Amazon are wrapped up in a price war over new top-tier hardcover books. They are all trying to lower their prices to out-compete each other. This is good for no one, not even consumers. The stores end up selling the books at below cost or demanding that the publishers give them better deals. The consumers end up with devalued ideas of what a book should cost ("Why would I buy that new hardcover by a fresh author for $25 when I can get the new John Grisham hardcover for $8?").
It's gotten to the point where Wal-Mart is selling the books cheaper than smaller bookstores can get them from the publisher. As a result, bookstores have been cleaning out Wal-Mart who are essentially subsidizing popular fiction. Just this week Wal-Mart has instituted a new rule limiting the number of copies a customer can buy.
This doesn't happen in other countries because they have decided that books are awesome and deserve price protections.
Last Monday, a MobyLives commentary suggested American publishers should respond to the Wal-Mart/Amazon/Target price war by emulating European publishers and colluding — legally — to fix prices and end discounting. Friday, the Wall Street Journal ran a story by Vanessa Fuhrmans pointing out that, “In much of Europe, the discount-pricing battle that has erupted among Wal-Mart Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Target Corp. could never happen because most major publishing markets, with the exception of the U.K., are bolstered by laws requiring all bookstores, online retailers included, to sell books at prices set in stone by publishers.”
For example, Fuhrmans observes, “Many in German attribute the country’s thriving literary and publishing scene to a system that outlaws the discounting of virtually all new books for 18 months. The system protects independent booksellers and smaller publishers from giant rivals that could discount their way to more market share. Along with 7,000 bookshops, nearly 14,000 German publishers remain in business.”
And that’s not all: “Defenders of the 120-year-old fixed-price system argue that prices of older books also are on average cheaper than in many other markets, since publishers and booksellers aren’t forced to make up for money-losing discounts on more popular books.”
