It’s a bar room brawl folks. Target is getting into the fight over low priced books.
The Minneapolis-based discounter said Monday that it will offer some of this season’s most anticipated book titles at $8.99, in line with recent moves by Walmart.com and Amazon.com.
What is the goal of corporations? To make money, of course. How do you make more money? By attracting more customers, of course. And how do you increase the number of customers? By reducing price or increasing quality. And how do you raise the quality of a book already written? You can’t. So what is your only alternative? Reduce the price.
And a million people across the United States will get quality books for a cheaper price.
Did Target do this willingly?
All three sellers are almost certainly taking a loss on the sales of these books in order to bring in customers.
I’m guessing no. The power of capitalism baby. Responsible for yanking hundreds of millions of people out of bone jarring poverty.
Know what I’m also guessing? I’m guessing all we’d hear about from the left is:
But the price war, occurring as the critical holiday shopping season gets under way, is bad news for independent bookstores, as well as the large chain bookstores Borders Group Inc. and Barnes & Noble Inc. These chains have seen their sales and profits squeezed by discounting and a decline in their music business.
Analysts also note that the price wars also don’t bode well for the overall book industry, which may likely cut authors’ advances and editors’ salaries.
“I don’t see an end in sight,” said Michael Norris, a senior analyst with Simba Information. “There is going to be a longer-term cost to cheap books. This book war drives out chain stores and independent bookstores.” He noted that Amazon.com, Target and Walmart don’t “value books” in the same way.
“Bookstores are invested in the future of books, but the others are not,” he continued.
More crap from the Leftists. Fake outrage for the benefit of just another capitalist evil corporation, Barnes and Noble or Borders. Or maybe they’ll defend the independent booksellers. You know, that group of people who price books so high that only the wealthy and privileged can afford them? Or maybe that group of people who will only hire part-time employees at minimum wage without benefits. Yeah, let’s defend them by all means.
But wait, the left could lash out and defend the poor authors and editors! Yeah yeah, those poor poor authors!
- John Grisham – $9 million in 2007
- Stephen King – $45 million in 2007
- Dean Koontz – $44.2 million in 2004
Oh, salary of an “editor” for a major author? ‘Bout a hundred k.
The benefit of getting books into an affordable range at the cost of reducing Mr. King’s millions? Easy call for the left. But we’ll never hear it from them.