Rare Book Monthly
Articles - December - 2005 Issue
A Bookselling Sci-Fi Nightmare: The Computers Take Over the Marketplace
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Now imagine that your colleague down the street also buys this software. Two Monsoon applications are now testing the marketplace and readjusting prices, in effect communicating with each other through their actions. If both are told to price books at the absolute lowest -- what do you think is going to happen to your pricing? I would say it's heading down the drain with every upload. Now, what will happen when 50 booksellers buy this software, or 100? Prices hit rock bottom at the speed of light. Monsoon is designed for cutthroat competition through underpricing. When the competition is cutthroat, however, the throat being cut may very well be yours.
For booksellers with bricks-and-mortar establishments, what are you going to say to a customer who buys your book for $29.00 in your shop, and then sees it for $2.00 on Amazon? Or will you check your computer at the register and say "today it is $2.00, it might be more or less tomorrow".
I can't help but think that there is, by necessity, a human-scale ecology in our bookselling marketplace, analogous to the ecosystem of our planet -- one that we need to respect. While we can gain a competitive edge in the short term and even solve productivity problems through the most sophisticated technologies, we may wish to reconsider when an investment simultaneously sows the seeds of our own destruction.
Renee Magriel Roberts can be reached at renee@roses-books.com.
