Wal-Mart Strafes Amazon in Book War

[Wickerman]

Source: The Wall Street Journal


Wal-Mart Stores Inc. launched a brash price war against Amazon.com Inc. on Thursday, saying it would sell 10 hotly anticipated new books for just $10 apiece through its online site, Walmart.com.

That was just the beginning.

Hours later, Amazon matched the $10 price, squaring off in a battle for low-price and e-commerce leadership heading into the crucial holiday shopping season. Wal-Mart soon fired back with a promise to drop its prices to $9 by Friday morning -- and made good on that vow by early evening Thursday.

Wal-Mart said the splashy move to discount pre-orders of popular books such as Stephen King's "Under the Dome" and Sarah Palin's "Going Rogue" was part of a larger strategy to establish Walmart.com as the biggest and cheapest online retailer.

"If there is going to be a 'Wal-Mart of the Web,' it is going to be Walmart.com," said Walmart.com CEO Raul Vazquez in an interview. "Our goal is to be the biggest and most visited retail Web site."

Wal-Mart's $10 promotion applies to the top 10 books coming out in November but the company is also selling 200 best-sellers for 50% of their list price.

The price war sent shivers through the publishing world. Wal-Mart's move, and similarly low prices for electronic books, may ultimately condition consumers to expect new titles to cost $10, a price that would force the publishing industry to re-scale its entire business, including the advances paid to writers.

"The endgame is rather scary for authors," said one book executive.

--more--



Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125565024634288895.html?mod=rss_Today's_Most_Popular

---

Look! The Walmartization of the literary world! Soon, authors will be working for minimum wage.

[la_chupa]

1. ah but do walmart shoppers read really?

wonder what they're charging for Richard Dawkins books

:nuke:

[LeftyMom]

8. $14.50 for The Greatest Show on Earth.

Not bad. Not the $9 Caribou Barbie's coloring book is going for, but still much better than the $30 list price.

[and-justice-for-all]

59. $30?? I pre-ordered my copy and it did not cost me $30...

Wal-mart is fucking evil, do not care how much cheaper it is there.

[mikelgb]

22. no but how else do you decorate a book shelf?

the precious moments dolls and nascar clocks only take up 2 shelves afterall

[Dulcinea]

48. How can that be when Wal-Mart doesn't sell any good books?

Last time I set foot in my local Wally World, all I saw were bodice-ripper romances, those execrable Stephenie Meyer books, and political books written by righties. No thanks.

[DainBramaged]

2. WalMart, if you won't give it away to us, we'll bury your profit margin

I din't know WalMart shoppers could read....................

[Wickerman]

6. It does sound ridiculous, doesn't it?

Yet on line. faced with $28 at Amazon and $9 at Walmartbooks.com I wonder how many folks can resist the "cost-savings"?

[DainBramaged]

14. This is where regulation is needed

WalMart has been doing this for years, spot a dozen key items that a competitor sells, destroy the pricing and the profit margin of the competitor, shift the customers to WalMart and force the competitor out of business. They've done it with Mom and Pop drug stores, food stores, stationary stores, you name it, and when the competition is gone, they raise the prices in that area and you have NO way to compare.


I fucking hate them with all of my heart.

[Sherman A1]

15. Predatory Pricing is the term

for this practice.

[naaman fletcher]

16. What's bad about this?

The lower classes getting products for less? Why is that a problem? Everyone complains when prices go up. Why does everyone complain that Walmart has almost single-handedly made the cost of living for the lower classes decrease in food, consumer goods, and everything else that they sell?

I can't tell you if after specific neighborhood stores go out of business whether or not Walmart continues to discount as much as before.. but I can tell you that they are still low cost, and lower than target.

What's the problem?

[JoeyT]

24. No problem at all.

Except undercutting the competition to force them out of business then jacking the prices when you're the only game in town is illegal.
There's also the fact that just about anything you buy at Wal-Mart is a low end knockoff. It really doesn't help that they treat their employees like crap. No health insurance, but plenty of dead peasant insurance.

So treating employees like dirt and hoping they die + illegal pricing + shoddy goods = just fine in your book?

[DainBramaged]

29. It may be illegal but they've been doing it for DECADES

When I worked for the Japanese, Walmart DEMANDED a $199 13" and 19" TV from us in 1992 for 1993 or they would stop doing business, and they wanted a $40 gross profit margin at those price points. At the time in the 90's, remote control 40 channel TVs at $199 were unheard of. But the demand was made, and to make the price point, the manufacturer I worked for caved in, moved production from the US to China, and for Christmas of 1993, Walmart had their $199 remote cable-ready TVs, and our other customers didn't. The backlash from that sale destroyed the reputation of that manufacturer, but WalMart didn't care, they made their point for the Christmas season. And it's competitors scrambled to find a competing model, but the couldn't (with any profit).

By 1993, WalMart had raised the prices to $229 everyday, but demanded the cost stay at $159 FOB Port of Los Angeles. They ruined the market for their competitors, the other manufacturers, the jobs that were shipped from TV plants in California and Arkansas, and took what little profit remained in 'leader' models and caused a huge swing upward in TV prices with features for a couple of years as Circuit City (gone), Best Buy, Service Merchandise (gone) Trader Horn (gone) and others from the era abandoned the category to WalMart. Now that manufacturer, after years of struggling and being marginalized is gone, absorbed by one of the Japanese giants, all so that they could meet the demands of Walmart. And don't get me going about MDF (Market Development Funds) which was legal extortion by these fucks.


Sure it's illegal, but since the Republicans controlled the House and Congress from 1994 to 2006, who was anyone going to complain to?

[sudopod]

41. DURR HURR

You're so clever.

[mitchum]

56. The Walton family loves the way you lick their hands...

and obediently curl up at their feet.
Nice doggie!

[naaman fletcher]

60. I don't lick their hands..

I don't even really go there much. But nobody has yet explained to me why slashing consumer goods in half or more over a decade is a bad thing.

[Odin2005]

63. It's predatory pricing done to create monopolies.

This is little different than what the robber barons did 130 years ago to drive competitors less able to sell products at a loss out of business. it is sleazy and against the spirit of the free market. Indeed, it is about the big guys DESTROYING competition. and then jacking up prices when compitition is gone.

This kind of BS is EXACTLY why the Sherman Anti-Trust act was created in the first place.

[naaman fletcher]

17. screw the mom and pop stores..

I remember as a kids driving around with my mother ALL DAY. Going to five or six different stores. Asking Mom & Pop if they have the product that she needs "in the back". At the end of the day, mom & pop were cleaning up, and were all country club types.

Those days are gone, and good. Everyone, but of course the poor, can go to one frigging store, find what they need, and buy it at a great price.

What could be better?

Now sure personally I don't like shopping there all that much, but I'm sure as hell not about to tell people with less money than me not to.

[No Elephants]

51. Mom and pop store owners = Country Club? Walmart=wonderful?

Are you always this full of it?

[naaman fletcher]

61. Back in the 80's..

When I was a kid, yes, the guy who owned the hardware store, the toy store, the local pharmacist, they all belonged to country clubs. Why? because they were ripping everyone off. I don't see the problem with Walmart products to consumers at very, very cheap prices.

If you would prefer to have to go to 5-6 different stores to do your shopping, and to pay twice as much, have at it. The vast majority of us prefer to go to one store and pay much lower prices.

Me, I prefer Target, which is slightly higher prices but better service.

[No Elephants]

50. +1

[RamboLiberal]

27. $28 at Amazon - rarely

New releases are usually under $20 at Amazon. Even cheaper than I can get with my membership discount & B&N unless I have a coupon. I like to read, get new audio books & TV show DVD's without breaking the budget so it's also handy to resell them on Amazon.

[Wickerman]

31. ok, yea for amazon. I rarely shop there, usually at indie stores

thanks for the info.

[DainBramaged]

36. I donate to BuzzFlash for the books rather than buy them from anyone

But that's just me.




:hi:

[AndyA]

3. Walmart eats everything it can find. Nothing is safe from it.

That company has done more damage to the United States than any terrorist.

[riverdeep]

52. Your terminology of 'eats' everything made me think of that animation,

the one that shows the growth of Walmart:

http://projects.flowingdata.com/walmart/

(only goes to 2006)

[Odin2005]

64. It's THE BLOB!

:scared:

[LisaM]

4. No thanks to either.

I'll stick with my local indie booksellers.

[RamboLiberal]

28. The local indies are on the way out

Sad fact. If Amazon, B&N, Wal-Mart don't kill them then I think technology will. And I wouldn't be surprised to see Borders go down, or B&N.

[LisaM]

34. Well it won't be with my help.

I know two indie dealers who are doing okay, but they have built up a very strong clientele. They provide this outdated thing called service!!!!

[riverdeep]

53. We only have one bookstore within a 25 mile radius of where I live.

A Border's. Plenty of fast food joints and sports bars, though. There may be a Christian bookstore around, but that's worse than no bookstores.

[imdjh]

5. I read some author worried about this a couple of years ago, but it was Amazon he feared.

His complaint was "hard bound books selling for $6.95" and frankly I thought it was a little elitist. My mom buys at least one $20-$30 title a week, and I think that's a bit steep for something that is in all likelihood going to be read once and sent to the thrift store.

[LisaM]

10. It's elitist for authors to worry about royalties?

It's one of the things I consider when I buy books. I'm especially careful, if I'm buying something by a poet or from a small press, to be sure to buy new so that the author will benefit.

Of course, if it's someone like J.K. Rowling or Michael Crichton, I'm less likely to worry. But I try hard to balance that out, and I NEVER shop at Amazon.

[rfranklin]

11. Think of it as paying for "the experience..."

Sometimes once is enough, sometimes you want it two or three times.

[wickerwoman]

37. The author is paid a miniscule amount of that $20-30.

A first time author is likely making less than 1% of the price you're paying for his/her book. Cut that in a third by dropping the price and where does it leave the author?

Is it elitist to not want to work your ass off 24/7 to make $6,000 a *year*?

[LuckyLib]

7. Walmart could drop Palin's book to 25 cents and I wouldn't shop there. Or read it.

[gratuitous]

9. I foresee new book contracts being written

With clauses forbidding publishers and distributors from participating in this sort of merchanidising. And the charge for new contracts will come from and be led by authors who extol the magic of free markets. When a free market sticks it to one of these rugged individualists, the first thing they do is start whining about how they need regulation and protection from the vicissitudes of the free market. But you're still a bum and a parasite because you lost your job and now you can't find another one that will pay you any more than half what you were earning before. Just so you know how this whole free market thing works.

[Abq_Sarah]

23. That's a definite possibilty

Thanks to a plethora of online retailers, book sellers don't have to put their items in WalMart. If the authors have a dedicated following, people will still buy their books at a higher rate.

[riverdeep]

54. The right wing authors usually don't have to worry.

Their books are often purchased en masse by well funded right wing organizations that then proclaim how Americans are buying up some screed by Mark Stein or something and how that proves America is right wing. Sadly, many many Americans buy the BS- witness Tea Parties. They actually think they're part of something instead of pawns on a chessboard.

[Dreamer Tatum]

57. That's called a vertical restraint, and they are generally illegal nt

[gauguin57]

12. Buy them at Costco, and support a responsible corporation.

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/130/thinking-outside-the-big-box.html?page=0%252C1%2C0

"... Wall Street grumbles that Costco cares more about its customers and employees than its shareholders; it pays workers an average of $17 an hour and covers 90% of health-insurance costs for both full-timers and part-timers. ..."

[Skink]

13. ebooks are trying to get new titles down to 9.99....

Sound like the 99 cent download. That's why in store paperback prices are going up and up and up.

[KamaAina]

18. "popular books such as... Sarah Palin's "Going Rogue""?

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Brick 'n' mortar Sprawl-Mart stores should have that in the Housewares section, next to the other doorstops. :P

[Wickerman]

21. too lightweight to be a useful doorstop

:evilgrin:

[garthranzz]

19. Apple to the rescue!

semi-seriously, the Apple tablet will probably revolutionize publishing the way the iPod did music. Authors (and artists) have been taken advantage of by publishers for centuries - what Samuel Johnson said about patrons applies to many publishers. From what I've read, it's worse in the music world. Publishers share as much fault as visual media:focusing on the big blockbuster (wal-mart style, perhaps) a lot of mid-list writers haven't been able to make it for years. There was a time when there was a group who had enough of a following to make a small profit for the publisher and a reasonable living for themselves. Spider Robinson in SF comes to mind. Harder and harder to do now.

Walmart already gets the grocery store/supermarket shlock sales. They won't fight for the next JK Rowling, who'll be too small to be seen at first.

Walmart's success proves that understanding 2+2=4 is not a matter of logic.

[Jim__]

20. yeah and if WalMart gets a foot in the book retail industry ...

... they will not sell anything resembling good literature, and they'll depress the market for it because they'll be selling all the popular books. Welcome to Readers Digest world.

[SpiralHawk]

47. Reader's Digest is going bankrupt, too

Welcome to the Brave New World.

[lib2DaBone]

25. Then ..once Wal-Mart puts all other sources out of business...

They will tell you what you CAN read and what you CAN'T read. They are the Fox News of Retail..

Family values... Contract with America, you're either with us or against us, they hate us for our freedom, we are fighting them there so we dont have to fight them here, yellow cake, WMD, and Gaaawd!

[JoeyT]

26. That'd never happen.

You say that like it happened with music or movies or something. Oh, nevermind, it pretty much did.

The only thing Wal-Mart is good for is drawing out the Randroids on a thread.

[DainBramaged]

30. WalMart censors magazines, video games, books, DVDs and CDs now, who are you kidding?

You really don't understand how they work.


http://walmartwatch.com/

[2Design]

32. Pac monster - not worth it at any price n/t

[Trillo]

33. "advances paid to writers"!

What a riot. The advances paid to writers is similar to the number of million-dollar-per year CEOs: Few and far between. "Advances paid to writers" is a rumor that runs mostly on great expectations.

There's little money in writing for the vast majority of authors. If anyone tells you different, they're lying.

[DainBramaged]

35. I've known a lot of people who wrote books through the years

technical manuals, textbooks, novels, some good sports and photography books. None got rich, NONE still write. The only people who get rich are the agents.

[wickerwoman]

38. I read the average professional writer makes less than $10,000 a year from writing

and that's finishing a book and a half to two books a year for long enough to get established.

Divide that into an hourly wage and McDonalds looks pretty damn good.

It's a wonder anyone writes anything at all.

[Abq_Sarah]

40. Sounds like small business owners

When you're establishing a company, you put in long hours with little compensation.

Now that the economy has tanked, I am making less money and working 2.5 times the hours of my lowest paid employee. You don't do it for the money, you do it for yourself.

[denem]

39. "Going Rogue" will cost you $19 in vomit alone.

Firewood would be cheaper.

[clspector]

42. Sorry, for most authors

minimum wage would be an improvement in earnings.

[Arkana]

43. I'll be damned if I ever buy books from Wally World.

I can get any book I can think of from Amazon and Barnes & Noble--if it's not Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, or Stephenie FUCKING Meyer, Wal-Mart doesn't have it.

[GrantDem]

44. I think there has to be a group of people at Wal-Mart HQ that meet daily>>

and think of ways to destroy America.

[MisterP]

45. won't this hurt CrapMart's sales of "The Turner Diaries"? n/t

[Anakin Skywalker]

46. WalFart's Selection of Entertainment Items is BORING

This is the result of CENSORSHIP.

[mule_train]

49. if wal mart doesnt have it you dont need it nt

[StarryNite]

55. People of Wal-Mart

Here are the people you'll see buying the books at Wal-Mart.

http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/

[Dreamer Tatum]

58. So, health care should be free, gas should be $1 a gallon, but books should be expensive.

:crazy:

[Odin2005]

62. This will be really bad for small, indie bookstores.

:(