Wal-Mart, Amazon, and Target's Full Frontal Assault on Indie Bookstores

The last couple weeks have brought some disheartening developments for indie bookstore owners (Amazon’s same-day shipping, Barnes and Noble’s Nook), but the biggest development has been the price war Wal-Mart, Amazon and Target are now engaged in.  For a great primer on why this effects consumers choices of books (as well as an authors ability to get published), please read Book Passage co-owner Bill Petrocelli’s recent Huffington Post column. Here is a sample:

One of the ironies of the current price war is that it includes The Lacuna, the latest novel by Barbara Kingsolver. But Kingsolver wasn’t always a best-selling author. When her first novel The Bean Trees was published in a modest print-run in 1988, independent booksellers recognized it as a literary treasure and sold thousands of copies. After that the chain stores climbed on the band-wagon, but without that first push from independent booksellers Kingsolver’s career might never have taken off.

Anyone who loves books should worry that the doors seem to be closing on the Barbara Kingsolvers of tomorrow.

I wonder where the Walton and Bezos’ families bought books while they were growing up?  I would have to guess that it would have been at an independent neighborhood bookstore.  So why do they seem so eager to now take that opportunity away from my family?

I realize times change, and I don’t consider myself some antiquated fellow pining for the way things used to be.  Indie bookstores probably needed a good wake up call, something to light the fire under their rear-end and innovate new ways to reach customers.  But the game as it is being played now is impossible for anyone but those with the deepest pockets to partake in.  Selling books for cheaper than it costs to stock them isn’t adding new competition into the market, competition that will benefit the consumer, it’s an attempt to eliminate competition, and then be the only place left standing for that consumer.  At that point they control what books are published and therefore what books you read and how much you pay for them.

When books are merely a loss-leader for the Wal-Mart’s, Costco’s and Target’s of the world, or when Amazon wipes away whole sections of your Kindle library over night, you will be wishing that you had your neighborhood indie store to turn to.  So make sure that you always will, and continue to support these stores whenever and however you can.