Letter-to-the-Editor Exchange: Doesn't "Shop Local" Author Know Barnes & Noble is Selling Her Books?

Laconia Daily Sun, April 6, 2009

Power of big box book sellers almost kept mine from publication

To the editor,

Regarding the letter-to-the-editor, "Doesn't "shop local" author know Barnes & Noble is selling her books?":  

It would be a violation of U.S. antitrust law for my publisher, Beacon Press, not to make "Big-Box Swindle" available to all retailers on equal terms.

Congress enacted this law decades ago in order to maintain a competitive marketplace.  Without it, a large, powerful retailer could pressure a supplier into denying a smaller competitor access to a popular product -- or it could insist that the supplier charge the competitor much higher prices.   

In fact, that's exactly what happened in the publishing industry in the 1990s.  Federal investigators found that the nation's two big book chains, Barnes & Noble and Borders Books, had pressured publishers into charging independent bookstores much higher prices, even on orders of the same size, and they had demanded that publishers give them all sorts of other favorable terms and promotional fees.  

Eventually, after much litigation, these illegal practices were put to an end in 2001, but not before 3,000 independent bookstores had closed and Barnes & Noble and Borders had grown to capture half the U.S. market.  Facing much less competition, the two chains quietly eliminated the steep discounts they had offered shoppers in the early years of their growth.

In "Big-Box Swindle," I argue that, if we want to maintain a competitive marketplace, we ought to do a much better (and faster) job of enforcing antitrust laws.

While you can find my book on the web sites of big chains like Wal-Mart, it's because they all tap into a centralized database of books in print.  That doesn't mean that you'll actually find my book on their store shelves or that they do anything to help promote and sell it.

Indeed, the power of these big retailers almost prevented "Big-Box Swindle" from being published in the first place.  When my agent sent the proposal out, all of the big publishers rejected it immediately.  One explained why in an email: "Genuinely fascinating... but the problem is the obvious one: the exposure of Barnes & Noble and Borders.  Our publisher shut it down immediately—didn't want to  bite the hand that feeds it."

Fortunately, Beacon Press, a 150-year-old independent publisher, was willing to publish this book and risk potential retribution from its biggest customers.  

I don't want to live in an America where a handful of giants decide which books get published and what products we'll have access to.  That's why I'm an avid supporter of independent bookstores and independent businesses of all kinds.  

Stacy Mitchell

Laconia Daily Sun, April 3, 2009

Doesn't "Shop Local" Author Know Barnes & Nobel is Selling Her Books?

To the editor,

Re: "Author brings case for supporting locally owned businesses to Belknap County."

Please note that author Stacy Mitchell's book is sold by Amazon, Borders, and Barnes and Noble. In other words, at all the "big box" bookstores nationwide.  The Wal-Mart website even links you to Barnes and Noble for her book.

Do as I say, not as I do?

Joe Driscoll
Laconia, NH