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From September 2013, Amazon has 29% of consumer book spending while Barnes & Noble has 21%. Walmart also has a sizable share. We tend to fixate on online, but

by smackfu 12y ago

From September 2013, Amazon has 29% of consumer book spending while Barnes & Noble has 21%. Walmart also has a sizable share. We tend to fixate on online, but a lot of people still buy books in stores, and Amazon has 0% of that market. Source: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/retailing/article/59194-signs-of-stability.html http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/retailin...

dragonwriter 12y ago
> From September 2013, Amazon has 29% of consumer book spending while Barnes & Noble has 21%. Walmart also has a sizable share. We tend to fixate on online, but a lot of people still buy books in stores, and Amazon has 0% of that market. Sure, but monopoly is by market, and if online vs. physical retail of books really is a distinct market (as, incidentally, you present it here) by the test applied in antitrust analysis (which I suspect it may well be), then the fact that there is also a physical book retail market that Amazon has none of would not be relevant, and combining the two markets to get a overall book spending market share would not be meaningful.
- Marcus316 12y ago
  I've never bought a book online from Amazon, interestingly enough. I HAVE bought books online from indigo.ca (more often than not I just go into the local store if it's a more popular book, as it is almost certainly in stock). Certainly there are other online book vendors around? Maybe I'm living in another world ...
  - octopus 12y ago
    You should always search for the best deal for your money. For e.g. I prefer to buy books from Amazon, but I always check Abebooks where sometime you find the international edition of the same book at 20% the price from Amazon (this doesn't really work for literature, but for Math or Programming books you have a good chance to find a better deal). As a side note, you should probably check Amazon.ca where you have free shipment for Canada for order over $25.
    - greenyoda 12y ago
      Actually, AbeBooks has been a subsidiary of Amazon since 2008, so you're still buying from Amazon: http://www.abebooks.com/books/CompanyInformation/?cm_sp=Ftr-_-Home-_-D1 http://www.abebooks.com/books/CompanyInformation/?cm_sp=Ftr-...
      - octopus 12y ago
        As long as the price is better it is not really important to me if I buy from an independent Abebooks or from an Amazon subsidiary.
    - Marcus316 12y ago
      That could be a lot of research. Given the nature of the books I tend to buy (usually no single item over $15-20, but in bulk orders up to $400 sometimes), I have little incentive to spend much time researching for "good deals" across multiple sites, possibly making multiple orders instead of a single order. I'm sure if I spent an hour or two finding the lowest price on 20-30 items I could save a bit of money on the order(s), but I don't think it's really worth my time for my default use case. Now, if I were looking at items like text books or reference books, I would likely do the research. Such materials are often sold at huge variation in price across retailers ...
      - octopus 12y ago
        If you tend to buy books in the $15-20 range doesn't make much sense to do an extensive search using a lot of sellers, but you can give Amazon.ca a try. I've found that it is cheaper to buy from Amazon than directly from a Canadian online seller and the effort is minimal. For reference books you should definitely check alternative sellers, I've seen programming books priced at $120 in Canadian bookstore at $20 (or less for the international edition).

by smackfu 12y ago

dragonwriter 12y ago

> From September 2013, Amazon has 29% of consumer book spending while Barnes & Noble has 21%. Walmart also has a sizable share. We tend to fixate on online, but a lot of people still buy books in stores, and Amazon has 0% of that market. Sure, but monopoly is by market, and if online vs. physical retail of books really is a distinct market (as, incidentally, you present it here) by the test applied in antitrust analysis (which I suspect it may well be), then the fact that there is also a physical book retail market that Amazon has none of would not be relevant, and combining the two markets to get a overall book spending market share would not be meaningful.

Marcus316 12y ago
I've never bought a book online from Amazon, interestingly enough. I HAVE bought books online from indigo.ca (more often than not I just go into the local store if it's a more popular book, as it is almost certainly in stock). Certainly there are other online book vendors around? Maybe I'm living in another world ...
- octopus 12y ago
  You should always search for the best deal for your money. For e.g. I prefer to buy books from Amazon, but I always check Abebooks where sometime you find the international edition of the same book at 20% the price from Amazon (this doesn't really work for literature, but for Math or Programming books you have a good chance to find a better deal). As a side note, you should probably check Amazon.ca where you have free shipment for Canada for order over $25.
  - greenyoda 12y ago
    Actually, AbeBooks has been a subsidiary of Amazon since 2008, so you're still buying from Amazon: http://www.abebooks.com/books/CompanyInformation/?cm_sp=Ftr-_-Home-_-D1 http://www.abebooks.com/books/CompanyInformation/?cm_sp=Ftr-...
    - octopus 12y ago
      As long as the price is better it is not really important to me if I buy from an independent Abebooks or from an Amazon subsidiary.
  - Marcus316 12y ago
    That could be a lot of research. Given the nature of the books I tend to buy (usually no single item over $15-20, but in bulk orders up to $400 sometimes), I have little incentive to spend much time researching for "good deals" across multiple sites, possibly making multiple orders instead of a single order. I'm sure if I spent an hour or two finding the lowest price on 20-30 items I could save a bit of money on the order(s), but I don't think it's really worth my time for my default use case. Now, if I were looking at items like text books or reference books, I would likely do the research. Such materials are often sold at huge variation in price across retailers ...
    - octopus 12y ago
      If you tend to buy books in the $15-20 range doesn't make much sense to do an extensive search using a lot of sellers, but you can give Amazon.ca a try. I've found that it is cheaper to buy from Amazon than directly from a Canadian online seller and the effort is minimal. For reference books you should definitely check alternative sellers, I've seen programming books priced at $120 in Canadian bookstore at $20 (or less for the international edition).