Book wars


In case you haven't heard . . .

Amazon.com extends Internet price war on books

By HILLEL ITALIE (AP)
NEW YORK — The book price wars are no longer just for pre-orders.
Amazon.com was offering hardcovers of John Grisham's "Ford County" and Barbara Kingsolver's "The Lacuna" for just $9 on Tuesday, the official release date for both books. Hardcovers generally have a list price of $24 or higher.

The price wars are driving publishers nuts. Even though no publisher has directly supported the lower prices with steeper than normal discounts (at least none have admitted it), the discounts are seen as decimating price points and killing or at least harming independent bookstores, who are losing sales because they generally can't offer to sell the books for less than they pay.

(The usual discount to book stores is 50 percent. That means the store paid somewhere in the area of half the list price to get the title. There are all sorts of promotions and other complications, but it's a useful rule of thumb. Oh, and authors generally get in the area of 6 to 12 percent, depending on the type of book, how many ultimately sell, the contract, etc. Yes, the guy or gal who wrote it gets the least amount of money in the process.)

There's some anecdotal evidence that the deeply discounted books are eating into the sales of other books a little lower in the pecking order, but given how slowly publishing works, it may be months before the real impact of this known.

At least somebody thinks people want to read books, and that they're worth bargaining over. The only problem is whether anyone will be able to afford to publish books when this is over.

Or write. But that's another subject . . .