By Richard Kostelanetz
My editor told me that the second edition of my "Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes" (Schirmer) would cost $60 before Christmas and $90 afterwards. These prices seemed a bit high, even for a book that is 8 by 11 inches, with 670 double-columned pages, but not outrageous.
So you can imagine my surprise to discover at the beginning of this year that the nouveau legendary Amazon.com, reputedly a notorious price-cutter, was offering my book for the whopping sum of $289.25. What world were they in? Since the Amazon format encourages customer response, my colleague Bob Grumman submitted a letter saying the asking price was way too high. His advice even appeared in the Amazon page for my book, at least for a while. Since the Amazon format asks for author comment, I submitted a letter suggesting that anyone getting this far could get my Dictionary far cheaper elsewhere. This advice was not published, apparently read by a censor who had temporarily let Bob's letter go.
Meanwhile, Amazon's principal online competitor, Barnes & Noble, was offering the book for $60 during January. At least one friend of mine got it for that price. Sometime during February, however, the B&N price jumped to $90. More recently, it has been $95 — an escalation made without explanation.
During February, Amazon, reconnecting to Mother Earth, lowered its price to $98, even claiming that the book at that price should be a hot bargain "reduced $191.50 (66%)," which is not the same as apologizing for a previous inflated mistake. Nonetheless, at the beginning of April, Amazon went back to $289.25, adding the advice that the book must be "back ordered." In mid-May, as I wrote, after an earlier version of this complaint appeared in print, Amazon reduced its price to $75. Its competitor, Borders.com, not to be over-cut, so to speak, consistently quotes $312.50, likewise adding "back ordered," while Books-a-Million offers my book for "$289.25. Club Price $260.32. Millionaire's Club Members save $28.93 (10%)," and Cody's in Berkeley also wants $289.25 over the Internet, all of them inventing those extravagant figures from Lord knows what authority — maybe one another.
Other prominent Web retailers, such as Powell's, DealPilot.com, 1bookstreet.com, Booksite.com, Books Now, YourBooks.com and BookSearchEngine.com, don't even list my Dictionary, as of the last time I looked, perhaps because the "reference" book is destined mostly for libraries, even though all of them carry other books of mine. A site called Fatbrain.com asks $60 for "450 [sic] pages; not yet published," while Blackwell's wants £40.95 ($61) for a book still described as "not available" and "not yet printed." Time has apparently passed them by.
A friend with Internet time to kill tells me that a Web site called VarsityBooks.com has my book for $90.25 reduced from "suggested price" of $95, even establishing authority of a sort by offering a picture of the book's cover, which they must have obtained by having my book securely in hand. Another site called Bigwords.com beats everyone else by promising to deliver my "Dictionary" for $55.80 postpaid. (Go to BestBookDeal.com, and you can get a $10 coupon from BigWords.com for placing an order over $100, which would reduce the cost of my book to $50.80 apiece if you purchased two copies. Consider that since you could get six copies here for the price of one at Borders, you could open an Internet bookstore at Bordersbis.com, recalling the French word for the same street address next door.)
The surprising truth is that Internet retailing is less efficient than most of us suppose. I don't believe that discrepancies in book pricing were previously so huge, but one advantage offered by the Internet for comparison shopping is that you can discover different prices without ever leaving your desk.
The proprietor of St. Marks Books, an independent store in New York's East Village, told me that none of his regular wholesalers had my book and thus that he wouldn't carry it. He surmised that the book must have a "short discount," as he put it, meaning a retailer's discount insufficient to warrant his wholesalers stocking it. Perhaps, I replied, but if one Internet retailer can sell a $90 book for $55.80, it must be somehow getting my Dictionary from somewhere for less.
One conspiratorial thought occurring to me is that some devious competitor of my publisher is stealthily offering the latter's titles with no intention to deliver but simply to price my publisher out of the market, so to speak. Maybe my publisher or some co-conspiring wholesaler is giving some Internet retailers higher prices to drive them out of business. (After all, more than one independent bookseller would be relieved if Amazon.com et al disappeared.)
With these thoughts in mind, consider that Amazon, Borders and Books-a-Million may not actually have my book. Unlike Varsity, none of them offer a photo of its cover. They are merely listing it to bolster their claims for offering far more books than my local retailer. Were someone to actually order it from them, they would get a reply that it was "back ordered," which is a retailing euphemism for currently unavailable — i.e., get it elsewhere, bud. (Or perhaps, if a customer persisted, they'd purchase a copy from Bigwords.com before shipping it out for $289.25.) Such great discrepancies in retail prices can prompt circuitous explanations.
I asked questions, mostly over the Internet. The only response came from Richard Berman in the Catalog Department at Amazon. It must be quoted verbatim to be believed:
"Dear Richard,
Thank you for writing Amazon.com!
Our pricing structure and strategy is something we have developed internally to best serve the needs and desires of our customers. As it stands now, we have chosen to offer discounts only on 400,000 selected titles. We understand that offering your title at a discount could possibly contribute to sales, and we apologize for not being able to accommodate you at this time.
We are constantly researching and analyzing our sales and marketing approach so please check back with us from time to time to see what changes arise. We are an ever-evolving entity and we're proud of the fact that we can take your feedback, as well as the feedback of others in the industry and our customers, into consideration when modeling our overall business approach."
Except for the use of my first name, this appears to be a smug form letter that has probably been used before to justify irresponsibility.
When I asked whether Amazon.com had actually sold any copies at its capricious prices, Richard Berman responded: "We do not provide sales information to publishers and authors at this time due to the competitive nature of our business." The only information I could glean from Amazon's Web site was that the book ranked 634,095 in sales. Since this number is higher than that for another recent book of mine ("Political Essays," at 1,047,826) but lower than another ("AnOther E. E. Cummings," at 348,137), can I assume that Amazon must have sold something?
Now necessarily more curious about the mysteries of book retailing, I wonder if I should be pleased or disappointed that my book hasn't yet to my knowledge shown up on New York street tables with other high-priced books that are supposedly pilfered from some loose-doored warehouse?
My editor at the publishing firm tells me that none of his colleagues can account for the discrepancies. "Retailers," he added, "can charge whatever they want." One obstacle in his obtaining inside information is that the small publishing firm contracting the book was taken over by a larger conglomerate. Other authors must have comparable stories of their new books priced so capriciously.
While one can be amused by the variety of retail prices, all apparently concocted without consulting other outlets in the marketplace (or wholesale cost), I'm pained by the thought that someone might look only at the exorbitant prices and decide against purchasing my book, not because the government forbade or a pressure group protested but because of checkout-counter censorship.
- Richard Kostelanetz (P.O. Box 444, Prince St., New York, NY 10012-0008) has published many books of poetry, fiction, experimental prose and criticism since 1964.
An earlier version of this piece appeared in The Weekly Standard.
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