Amazon’s Kindle e-reader has been a huge success in the United States, capturing a large portion of the market for retail books and playing a significant role in the end of rival retailers such as Borders. Plans to introduce the device in independent book sellers, however, have been less of a success for the large e-commerce company.
Amazon’s new Source marketing programme aims to make the Kindle a sale item in thousands of independent US bookshops. The company plans to allow independent retailers to sell the Kindle in their stores, earning a commission on the sale as well as a fee from every e-book purchased by owners of the device.
While some bookshops have responded positively to the programme, others have savaged Amazon for intruding on small businesses. One US bookstore owner went as far as describing the programme as an attempt by Amazon to “invite hungry foxes into the henhouse.”
Carole Horne, the owner of the Harvard Book Store in Massachusetts, claims that the plan is unfair to retailers:
“We sell Kindles for essentially no profit, the new Kindle customer is in our store where they can browse and discover books, the new Kindle customer can then check the price on Amazon and order the e-book. We lose them as a customer completely after two years. Doesn’t sound like a great partnership to me.”
Other bookshop owners offered similar opinions. Skylight Books, an independent bookstore in California, called the programme a “Trojan Horse-style attempt to gain access to our customers.”
Resentment towards Amazon is far from uncommon from independent bookstores, who claim that the company has set its prices artificially low in an attempt to steal customers from retailers. Some bookshop owners believe that e-reader deals are better pursued directly between independent retailers and book publishers.
