Amazon strikes again

[L C]

Any other company with such practices gets smacked down by the government. Why not Amazon?

http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/daily...bookstores.php

[Jena Grace]

Free enterprise. What are they doing that you think is illegal?

[L C]

Selling goods below cost to run the competition out of business. That's called "dumping," and companies have absolutely been prosecuted for that in the past.

[Jena Grace]

I admit I know nothing about this, but I'll do my own research instead of asking for examples (a cursory look-up only discussed the WTO and foreign vs. domestic). Thanks for the food for thought. I'll still take the $20 textbook over the $220 one. The markup on those is what ought to be outlawed.

[The Tinman]

It's called dumping when foreign firms do it. I've never heard of the government prosecuting grocery stores or Target for selling loss-leader products to draw traffic.

[Gary Kessler]

It's called dumping when foreign firms do it.

And mostly with the support of/subsidizing by their governments, I think.

[Lea Zalas]

I think anything that takes some of the financial pressure off of students is a good thing. I also think that skyrocketing textbook prices should be outlawed just like gas prices. An accounting textbook back in 1996 cost me $36 and I thought it was highway robbery even then. But there is no good reason for a textbook to cost $200. . .unless it's printed on human skin with human blood for ink.

[Gary Kessler]

It goes both ways. The textbook publishers (I've been managing editor of an academic press) have been price gouging a captive audience (you want to take this class? You have to buy these specific textbooks.) for centuries. This seems like an equalizing move at least in this realm. Textbooks should have gone to e-books some time ago anyway, and it has only been an under-the-table publishers' agreement that has stimied that.

[L C]

Gary, you're forever conflating textbooks and academic press books. Why do you do that? I know that you know they're not the same thing. One of the reasons textbooks -TEXTBOOKS- are so expensive is because the lazy professoriate insists on tons of ancillaries. They cost lots of $$$ to develop, but the only thing that can actually be SOLD is the textbook.

Jena -the markup, after expenses, is not that huge.

[Gary Kessler]

Gary, you're forever conflating textbooks and academic press books. Why do you do that? I know that you know they're not the same thing. One of the reasons textbooks -TEXTBOOKS- are so expensive is because the lazy professoriate insists on tons of ancillaries. They cost lots of $$$ to develop, but the only thing that can actually be SOLD is the textbook.

Jena -the markup, after expenses, is not that huge.

Oh, I'm FOREVER conflating textbooks and academic press books? I don't really recall doing this all all before. Examples? The bulk of academic press books are books to be used as texts in universities. That doesn't mean that all textbooks are published by academic presses--not by far. But, as most of the books an academic press publishes are textbooks and I've worked inside academic presses, I know more than a little bit about the pricing of textbooks by academic presses.

So, I just don't see either your premise or your comment as relevant to what I posted.