Wal-Mart, Amazon Limiting Discounted Purchases
-- Publishers Weekly,10/30/2009
Plans by independent booksellers to buy the 10 November titles being offered at steep discounts by Wal-Mart, Target and Amazon have been foiled by the big box retailers who are limiting the number of books one customer can buy. According to the Wall Street Journal, Wal-Mart is limiting purchases to two copies per customer, Amazon has a three-copy limit and Target five. There has been lots of discussion in bookseller forums about buying quantities of titles at the big box retailers as a protest to the discounting policies, but also as way to get a better margin since the 10 books would be cheaper to buy from the stores than from the publishers.
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| Submitted by: | Timothy Capehart (tcapehart@daytonmetrolibrary.org) 11/2/2009 2:51:08 PM PT |
| Location: | Dayton |
| Occupation: | Librarian |
My mother used to send each of us three children into the grocery to purchase items on sale with a limited quantity stipulation. I think it's an excellent idea for small store owners to take advantage of this especially at Wal-mart. Fill your shelves with bestsellers, offer your own discounts & make money on the backs of these monsterstores!
| Submitted by: | A concious book industry observer 10/30/2009 11:33:14 AM PT |
| Location: | The land of opportunity |
| Occupation: | Bowling |
I'd be very curious as to how the physical retailers AND Amazon for that matter would "police" this. An independent store owner could still send one or several of their employees to Wal-mart and buy multiple copies anyway. Or, on Amazon, a user could set up accounts with multiple e-mail addresses and even use the same credit card to buy in mass.
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