Another Blow to Print: The Most Popular Books Become Loss-Leaders
The current big phase of the technology revolution, startlingly taking place while the country is in the grip of a major recession, is once again cutting the heads off the print industry.
The American Booksellers Association is pleading with the Justice Department to probe the price war among Amazon, Target, and Wal-Mart that has resulted in dirt-cheap hardcover prices.
Too late. Kindle itself is the No. 1 bestseller in all categories at Amazon, which just reported an astounding 69 percent increase in profit for the third quarter.
Bestseller hardcover books by John Grisham and Stephen King, among others, are being sold on those sites for about $9; they typically retail, Bloomberg says, for $25 to $35. The industry group calls it "illegal predatory pricing that is damaging to the book industry and is harmful to consumers."
At 247wallst.com, Douglas A. McIntyre more accurately describes it merely a price war: "The sale of hardcovers is essentially just a 'loss leader' to pick up customers who may also buy consumer electronics. clothing, jewelry, cosmetics, and gardening supplies to put under the Christmas tree as gifts."
Newspapers are on their way to becoming loss leaders for their websites, Kindles and E-Readers are jostling for position, and the new generation of smartphones may even replace laptops, let alone drive the final nail in the coffin of major print outlets.
5 comment(s)
The new electronic technology hasn't changed anything. Their is no reason why newspapers should be any less relevant now then they have ever been. People will be reading books and newspapers the same way they do now twenty years from now.
Posted On: Friday, Oct. 23 2009 @ 7:16PMWhy bail out newspaper and books. The children graduating from high school and the dropouts do not read.
Posted On: Saturday, Oct. 24 2009 @ 12:22PMi want all you losers to pay double for my books...! i want lots more money....! no cheap books for the losers who buy my lousy books!
Posted On: Saturday, Oct. 24 2009 @ 3:27PMI'll take an actual book over an electronic reader any day. Electronic readers seem like a passing fad. What advantage do they provide over actual books? They save apartment space, but then again anyone who buys a lot of books probably prefers them over an electronic reader.
Posted On: Saturday, Oct. 24 2009 @ 5:42PMIt is left out of the argument that there is no critical journalism left in the U.S. True investigative journalism, free from parent company controls (usually tangled up in military interest) is gone. The buyout of The Village Voice and The LA Weekly is a chilling example. The Texas ol' boy congolomerate that bought out these bastions of local and radical journalism has transformed the LA Weekly from a great read to a snarky, celebrity driven, lifeless waste of pulp. This is one obvious cause that is going undiscussed.
Posted On: Sunday, Oct. 25 2009 @ 2:43PMIt is also obvious children aren't encouraged to read - that leads to asking questions. Their doped up, cash poor, infantile parents are unable to develop their own minds, let alone their children.
As American poet Vince Neill once wrote, 'God Bless the children of the damned'