Amazon Buys The Book Depository

[Crusader]

I love The Book Depository and buy almost all my pbooks from them. They've said on Twitter that they are going to keep running independently, so I hope they keep the free international shipping and the great service.

If anything I can only hope that Amazon will add those great Bargain Bin and new release discounts to the BD line-up.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by pastanley

No foreign language- its English only baby!

Wrong, baby! I've ordered an Spanish book. They get a lot of them, later than in Spain, but no fixed price, so cheaper than here.

[abookreader]

I think it's possible for there to be no change on the user-end. Zappos and Woot here in the US are both still running business as usual.

The concept of Amazon dabbling with ePubs is intriguing to me though.

[Crusader]

I see lots of people have asked about the buy out on Twitter and BD have now said there's no plans on changing the free shipping (hurray). That was the one major selling point for me above Amazon.

The Office of Fair Trading is apparently looking into the merger and are asking for input according to this article.

[jbcohen]

Indeed great book store, however my chose book reader has two problems: 1) small screen and 2) Can only buy from stores with a blackberry app available. Unfortunately I do not see a reader app from them.

[CommonReader]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

But antitrust generally relies on marketshare as a yardstick for market power. And neither Amazon nor the Depository has enough global or european share for even the most paranoid to invoke antitrust.

There are also still the national anti trust authorities. If authorities in the UK believed that Amazon and TBD controlled just the ebook market within the UK they could also block the deal.

The EU Commission showed its anti trust powers when it blocked the takeover of Honeywell by GE back in 2001 - and those are two US companies, after all.

[Fbone]

There is still Better World Books for free worldwide delivery. Selection and quality not as good though.

http://www.betterworldbooks.com/

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by CommonReader

The EU Commission showed its anti trust powers when it blocked the takeover of Honeywell by GE back in 2001 - and those are two US companies, after all.

Which is *one* of the reasons why I said EU applies their laws wherever/whenever it pleases them. Examples abound.

[charleski]

I've bought quite a few books from TBD (I especially liked their 10%-off vouchers on prices that were already rock-bottom ). But I'm afraid I think things will change. It was clear that they were heavily focussed on competing against Amazon, usually selling their books for 1p less than the Amazon price. Still, it was making a reasonable profit (£2.3m on sales of £69m a year ago, reportedly). Now there's no longer any incentive to push so hard to grab market-share away from Amazon, so something's going to alter.

I can't see the print sales division lasting much more than a year after the buyout. Remember Bookpages? No? It was bought by Amazon as well... I think the international supply-chain and the operations hub in Egypt are the main attraction to Amazon, and those operations will get folded into the parent company. This might mean that Amazon starts becoming less expensive for those outside the US and EU, one can only hope. But from a UK perspective it's certainly not good news - active competition is the only thing stopping prices from drifting up.

[Blue Tyson]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

For now.

It makes perfect sense that Amazon, which is expanding globally, should be interested in a bookstore that makes efficient global delivery of print books its calling card.
Once the deal is finalized and TBD gains access to Amazon's content acquisition resources and regional storefronts there is, in fact, ample reason to expect global english sales to be followed by global spanish sales, and "out-of-region" sales and delivery; in effect, bringing to print what Kindle brings to digital.
With the future of book publishing inextricably tied to ebooks, and ebooks by nature a global product regardless of language, it is unavoidable that the business will evolve to global sales and do away with regional rights and georestrictions for all but the most parochial content. It is just a matter of time. And economies of scale.

Said networks can also be used for getting Kindles to people more cheaply, too.

[AnemicOak]

The Booksellers Association has announced it will formally oppose the merger of Amazon and The Book Depository, with the BA saying that Amazon already had a "de facto monopoly". Meanwhile, the PA is actively considering opposing the deal.

http://www.thebookseller.com/news/pa...ry-merger.html

[ATimson]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

http://www.thebookseller.com/news/pa...ry-merger.html

It sounds like their complaint is "we don't even bother to try to match Amazon's prices but can't survive, won't anybody think of the retail stores, boo-hoo".

[charleski]

Originally Posted by ATimson

It sounds like their complaint is "we don't even bother to try to match Amazon's prices but can't survive, won't anybody think of the retail stores, boo-hoo".

"We in the book trade need to be ever-mindful of the fact that high street retailers cannot survive as showrooms for internet retailers indefinitely." - That sounds reasonable to me. Let's not pretend that people don't exploit physical stores to go and browse and then whip out their phones to order off the internet.

[ATimson]

Originally Posted by charleski

Let's not pretend that people don't exploit physical stores to go and browse and then whip out their phones to order off the internet.

I'm not trying to pretend that. But if Amazon has the book for 33% off list, and the store has it for 0% off, they're not even trying to compete, but are just burying their heads in the sand. (It's made even worse by Borders and Barnes & Noble in particular, where often the same book will be cheaper online.)

[AnemicOak]

The Publishers Association has united with the Independent Publishers Guild for the first time to oppose the merger of Amazon and The Book Depository, while calling for a wider public investigation into the competition between the online and bricks and mortar bookselling market.

http://www.thebookseller.com/news/pa...amazontbd.html