Are Overstock.com and Amazon in a price war?
Online bookseller Amazon has slashed prices on many of its bestselling titles after the website Overstock.com discounted its books to what the site said was 10 percent off the Amazon prices.
The Overstock.com site boasts that Overstock.com 鈥渨rote the book on savings鈥� and specifically challenges Amazon in .
According to the Overstock website, the super-low prices are only available for a week. The company had previously said that the promotion would last "a limited time."
鈥淓veryone is accustomed to looking at Amazon when they鈥檙e shopping for books,鈥� an anonymous spokesperson for Overstock.com told the website . 鈥淲e鈥檙e hoping this will get them to look at Overstock first.鈥�
Whether or not the move was made in response to Overstock鈥檚 new strategy, the fact remains that Amazon has since discounted many of its bestselling titles, such as 鈥淎nd the Mountains Echoed鈥� by Khaled Hosseini and 鈥淚nferno鈥� by Dan Brown, to extremely low prices, implementing discounts of as much as 50 to 65 percent discounts in some cases. 鈥淢ountains鈥� is currently available on the site for $12.04 compared to its original $28.95 list price. (The one exception: J.K. Rowling鈥檚 newest title "The Cuckoo's Calling." The book is discounted, but at a less steep 42 percent, for a current price of $15.20 versus its original $26.)
It's only the latest skirmish in the drama that has become the e-book pricing wars. It was Amazon鈥檚 low prices that caused Apple and other publishers to allegedly create a plan to fix prices on e-books in an attempt to compete with the online bookseller. The other publishers settled, but Apple was recently found guilty by the Justice Department of conspiring to raise the prices. Apple had allegedly suggested going with the 鈥渁gency model鈥� for prices, in which the publisher would assign prices rather allowing booksellers like booksellers like Amazon to set the standard.
