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As Competition Wanes, Amazon Cuts Back Discounts

nytimes.com

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Re: As Competition Wanes, Amazon Cuts Back Discounts

#41

Post by ja27 »

kryten wrote: post #38
ChuckMcM wrote: post #7

This is poor journalism. From the article: "Now, with Borders dead, Barnes & Noble struggling and independent booksellers greatly diminished, for many consumers there is simply no other way to get many books than through Amazon. And for some books, Amazon is, in effect, beginning to raise prices." Now what they are really saying is that Amazon is pricing books closer and closer to "list price" which is the price that…

To be honest, Borders was like a library with built in coffee shop in the UK. People just went in there, checked out the book and bought it on amazon whilst sitting in the shop eating blueberry cheesecake and drinking a nice cappuccino...

Borders (in the US) used to send out coupons for 30-40% off a single item. That usually put their price very close to Amazon's, assuming Borders had the book you were looking for.

Re: As Competition Wanes, Amazon Cuts Back Discounts

#43

Post by ajtaylor »

lettergram wrote: post #18
ajtaylor wrote: post #5

Maybe I'm hopelessly naive, but why don't the publishers drop their prices by 5-10%? Since Amazon is selling books at a percentage of the cover price, dropping the cover price should theoretically offset the decreasing Amazon discount. I know that books have the price printed on them, but what a great marketing project it could be: "Look, we're dropping our prices across the board by 5%. Go buy a book!"

or Amazon just keeps it at the same price, making more money.

It was hinted at in the article, but the publisher sells the book to Amazon for less than the cover price. Of course, I have no idea if Amazon's purchase price is a percentage of the cover. But if it's not (and that's what I would have negotiated) then changing the cover price won't affect the revenue to the publisher.

Re: As Competition Wanes, Amazon Cuts Back Discounts

#44

Post by barking »

cranefly wrote: post #39
staircasebug wrote: post #9

Just seems like typical retailing to me. Non mass-market books don't get discounts. If someone is really searching to purchase "Jim Harrison: A Comprehensive Bibliography, 1964-2008", they're probably going to buy it with or without the discount attached. Btw, Kindle price of "Born to Lose" is $9.34 at the moment. Seems like a good discount to me.

Amazon kindle price here is US$20.35 even though I'm using Amazon.com. Usual excuse for gouging us here is the cost of transport to our small market. Never thought that applied to electrons too :(

With a netherlands ip address it's $10.59 on amazon.com.

Re: As Competition Wanes, Amazon Cuts Back Discounts

#45

Post by kommissar »

zaroth wrote: post #36

> It is difficult to comprehensively track the movement of prices on Amazon, so the evidence is anecdotal and fragmentary. I guess this is the difference between award winning journalism and essentially an editorial. David Streitfeld of the NY Times should be inspired by the work of the Sally Kestin and John Maines of the Florida Sun Sentinel, who won the 2013 Pulitzer for Public Service for their "investigation of o…

Actually, a website already exists to track Amazon prices. They could have just searched for it:

http://camelcamelcamel.com/

Re: As Competition Wanes, Amazon Cuts Back Discounts

#46

Post by johnpowell »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #7

This is poor journalism. From the article: "Now, with Borders dead, Barnes & Noble struggling and independent booksellers greatly diminished, for many consumers there is simply no other way to get many books than through Amazon. And for some books, Amazon is, in effect, beginning to raise prices." Now what they are really saying is that Amazon is pricing books closer and closer to "list price" which is the price that…

Yeah, all the booksellers would need to buy all new inventory and lease a new building and hire new staff. Brick and Mortar isn't like firing up a Linode. Amazon is basically the Walmart of the Internet.

Re: As Competition Wanes, Amazon Cuts Back Discounts

#47

Post by makomk »

ryanpardieck wrote: post #40
n00b101 wrote: post #4

> Amazon, which became the biggest force in bookselling by discounting so heavily it often lost money IANAL, but this sounds like a potential anti-trust case to me. "Predatory pricing practices may result in antitrust claims of monopolization or attempts to monopolize. Businesses with dominant or substantial market shares are more vulnerable to antitrust claims. However, because the antitrust laws are ultimately inte…

Honestly the more I read about predatory pricing, the more it seems like a complete fiction. One of those things that seems to make sense in theory, and maybe makes for a good political screed every now and then. If low prices drove the competitors out, then high prices will surely see them flood back in. Any firm that gains monopoly power and hikes the prices without inviting fresh competition probably worked out so…

> If low prices drove the competitors out, then high prices will surely see them flood back in.

Why? The business of selling books is, like most businesses, capital-intensive and risky. On the other hand, if anyone does go back into the business Amazon just has to change a few lines in their database and the new competitors are out of business with a whole bunch of stock they can't shift and a huge loss for investors.

Re: As Competition Wanes, Amazon Cuts Back Discounts

#48

Post by gabemart »

_delirium wrote: post #31
manojlds wrote: post #3

The penultimate paragraph compounds my confusion: > For Mr. Hollock, the “Born to Lose” author, the issue is readers, not dollars. His award-winning book, published by Kent State University Press, had a steep list price of $35 to begin with. In the author’s view, Amazon is simply compounding the trouble by raising its price to more than $30 from $23. Why is the author complaining about Amazon, when the list price is…

It's a 14% discount only thanks to the strange way pricing in the publishing industry has developed: it's a 14% discount off of an 100% markup. For mostly historical reasons, wholesale price has become quasi-fixed at 50% of list. So in this case what's happened is the publisher has chosen to sell the book for $17.50, and the way you do that is by setting an entirely notional "list price" at 2x the intended wholesale…

You are correct, but the system isn't really as strange as you imply. Many wholesalers in many different markets set a recommended retail price that's some multiple of the wholesale price they charge to their customers.

As far as I understand, Amazon works out the optimal discount for a book based on a number of factors including the popularity of the book and the prices charged by their competition. The same book at B&N is $31.49 [1], 88 cents more than Amazon is charging.

[1] http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/born-to-lose-james-g-hollock...

Re: As Competition Wanes, Amazon Cuts Back Discounts

#50

Post by xyzzy123 »

kryten wrote: post #38
ChuckMcM wrote: post #7

This is poor journalism. From the article: "Now, with Borders dead, Barnes & Noble struggling and independent booksellers greatly diminished, for many consumers there is simply no other way to get many books than through Amazon. And for some books, Amazon is, in effect, beginning to raise prices." Now what they are really saying is that Amazon is pricing books closer and closer to "list price" which is the price that…

To be honest, Borders was like a library with built in coffee shop in the UK. People just went in there, checked out the book and bought it on amazon whilst sitting in the shop eating blueberry cheesecake and drinking a nice cappuccino...

I used to be an avid Borders customer; I could physically go to the store and check out their computer section and through serendipity I would find things I liked and buy them.

They were enormously overpriced, like most computing related books outside the U.S. ($100 NZD +), but I would wear that because I liked the experience.

This was in about 2003. By 2008, the section which held the long tail I liked had shrunk to maybe 2 shelves. They no longer kept the kinds of books I liked in inventory, just "Photoshop for dummies" or perhaps the odd "Learning Python".

At the point where everything I might want had to be ordered in and would take longer to arrive than from Amazon, I stopped bothering to go :/

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