Quote:
Originally Posted by leebase
I'm not sure it's in the publishers best interest dot Borders to go out of business. If they give Amazon and B&N such better terms that Borders can't compete, how does that help the publishers?
Lee
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Sounds stupid, right?
Yet for the past 30-plus years that is *exactly* what the publishers have done: it's called "volume discounts". The higher the volume of books you buy from them, the better the terms they'd give.
That is how the chain and mall bookstores killed the independents.
That is how the megastores killed and absorbed the chains.
That is how WalMart and Target and online have been killing the superstores.
The publishers have been (knowingly or not) pursuing a policy of channel consolidation for 30-plus years and it is only now, at the end game, that they are even *starting* to smell the coffee.
It clearly is no more in the publishers' interest to kill Borders than it was for them to help kill the small corner bookstores and newstands. But the publishers aren't exactly run by rational, thoughtful, long-view people and they haven't been for decades. Otherwise they woulldn't have outsourced most of the added-value parts of the book-publishing supply chain and stuck themselves with the most easily dispensable role.
The current argument, however, is the opposite: Borders wants the publishers to give them *better* terms than B&N and B&N says that if they give sinking-ship Borders better terms than they get, they'll start to take on water and then the publishers will have *two* sinking ships to worry about.
Note, I'm not saying it's true; merely that that's B&N's position.
And that it is in B&N's best interests to be the last superstore chain standing. They *need* Borders to go away ASAP; the remaining B&M business just "ain't big enough" for both chains.