Amazon's 'Declaration of War'

[PETRUS]

From Shelf Awareness:

Yesterday Amazon.com quietly began discounting many bestselling hardcover titles between 50% and 65%, levels we've never seen in the history of Amazon or in the bricks-and-mortar price wars of the past. The books are from a range of major publishers and include, for example, Inferno by Dan Brown, which has a list price of $29.95 but is available on Amazon for $11.65, a 61% discount; And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini, listed for $28.95, offered at $12.04, a 58% discount; Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg, listed at $24.95, available for $9.09, a 64% discount; and The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, listed at $17.99, available for $6.55, 64% off. A notable exception is The Cuckoo's Calling by J.K. Rowling, using the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, which is discounted 42%.

The discounts are far below the usual 40%-50% range sometimes offered by Amazon, warehouse clubs and other discounters and are more typical for remainders than frontlist hardcovers. In some cases, the hardcovers are priced below the Kindle editions.

"It's an open declaration of war against the industry," said Jack McKeown, president of Books & Books Westhampton Beach, Westhampton Beach, N.Y. Like several people familiar with Amazon's move, he speculated that Amazon has been "emboldened" by the Justice Department's victory against five major publishers in the e-book agency model case as well as Wall Street's acceptance of continued losses by Amazon for now in the expectation of retail domination--and major profits--eventually....

Read more: http://www.shelf-awareness.com/issue.html?issue=2049

For those who don't know, this means Amazon is selling books for below a normal bookstore's costs for the most part.

What do people think of Amazon's business practices? Is this an antitrust issue?

[onehandle]

1. Amazon has a lot of politicians in their pocket, so they can do what they want.

Apple, on the other hand, does not, tried to reduce Amazon's monopoly on ebooks, and got attacked by the justice department, on Amazon's command.

Amazon is the Walmart of online shopping.

[reformist2]

2. It seems like industries across the board are all drifitng toward the endgame, that is, monopolies.

It's actually a little amusing to me that the same people so horrified by the lack of choice in the old Soviet Union praise the same lack of choice (and increasingly crappy quality) we are experiencing here in America. Even though it is privately owned, from a consumer perspective, Wal-Mart is basically the reincarnation of the old GUM in Moscow.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUM_(department_store)

[TreasonousBastard]

3. Been watching this for a while and have to admit Amazon's genius for making billioins...

out of nothing.

Wal-Mart has to show a profit, but Amazon has used books as a loss leader since the beginning, and priced everything else as close to cost as possible. I suspect Amazon has put more businesses in the ground than Wal-Mart ever will, but people, even here, happily buy because they get good deals.

Amazon put Borders out of business when it offered to handle its online business. It was horrible watching all Borders business drop into a black hole while Amazon picked up the pieces. Should have been highly illegal, and probably was, but nothing was done. Imagine your Kobo order going south and getting Kindle offers in email.

They ran Netflix's servers, and when they started selling online movies, suddenly Netflix was going down at peak hours. I don't know what happened, but it got straightened out. Were some of their investors also Netflix's? Did Netflix manage to move to new servers? Who knows, but it sure looked like they were taking Netflix down.

[Brickbat]

4. Obama will be giving a speech at an Amazon warehouse on Tuesday. Nice.

This is roughly equivalent of going to a Wal-Mart and calling for more of the kinds of jobs it offers.

That's how I see it. Amazon's a union-buster, too.

[elehhhhna]

5. Bezos is lauded as a supergenius capitalist

though he's never turned a profit. Maybe they get special love from the gov by handing over our browsing and buying info.