Author: Monique (Page 46 of 125)

New Yorker, Nov 9, 2009)

Price wars typically hurt the retailers involved, and often times their suppliers, especially if the cost cutting is shared by the two parties. The Amazon and Wal-Mart recent decision to deeply discount a key group of titles just seems like a race to the bottom. What are they really trying to achieve with this? The suggestion in the New Yorker article is that deeply discounting a select group of things brings people to the store, and then you can sell them more stuff once they’re there. This has been the Wal-Mart model for years. Appear to be “the lowest price is the law” (on a lot of things) and you get people there for the discount, but once they’re there, they aren’t going to price compare, they’ll just purchase the non-discounted products as well.

What the two companies appear to be fighting over is a selection of bestsellers, but James Surowiecki argues that it’s really customers.

Quote: So you might wonder why Wal-Mart recently decided to start its own price war, taking on Amazon in the online book market. Wal-Mart began by marking down the prices of ten best-sellers, including the new Stephen King and the upcoming Sarah Palin, to ten bucks. When Amazon, predictably, matched that price, Wal-Mart went to nine dollars, and, when Amazon matched again, Wal-Mart went to $8.99, at which point Amazon rested. (Target, too, jumped in, leading Wal-Mart to drop to $8.98.) Since wholesale book prices are traditionally around fifty per cent off the cover price, and these books are now marked down sixty per cent or more, Amazon and Wal-Mart are surely losing money every time they sell one of the discounted titles. The more they sell, the less they make. That doesn’t sound like good business.

Not good business, if you’re involved in selling books and you’re not Amazon or Wal-Mart. For the two behemoths, they’re only taking a hit on about 10 titles and the impact on revenue is minimal, if they can bring in other sales. The price war is also worth the publicity. Wal-Mart certainly wasn’t top of mind yesterday but I’m thinking about them today. (Nasty thoughts, but thoughts nonetheless.)

Read the full article: New Yorker, Nov 9, 2009)

Four new books arrived on my desk today.

Looking forward to reading this weekend.

Chris Labonte, Douglas & McIntyre’s Assistant Publisher & Acquiring Editor, imagines a fiction program that features extraordinary writers. “Extraordinary writers willing to push the bounds of literature; to mess around with form and content and style; to bend genre and explore new ways of telling good stories.”

The result is the Fall 2009 “Imagine That” campaign and the Speak Easy podcast, hosted by John Burns.

Featured in my press kit are the following books.

Daniel O’Thunder: a Novel by Ian Weir

Heading South: a Novel by Dany Laferriere, translated by Wayne Grady

Red: A Haida Manga by Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas

Also in my kit was a reminder that Douglas & McIntyre has been publishing Quebecois and French-Canadian literature in translation for nearly two decades. Included on the list are several works by Monique Proulx (I want to read Invisible Man at the Window) and works by Daniel Poliquin.

I’m looking forward to more podcasts and great fiction. Thanks for keeping me in the loop D&M.

My friend Rachael Ashe brings photo canvases from imagination to life. She is currently working on a portrait series and recently I was in the camera light. But what really caught my eye was the altered books that she’s been working on.

If you like my photo, check out other work by Rachael.

Rachael’s Website
More Portrait Series and Other Photos on Flickr
Etsy for Rachael’s photography and altered books

Thank you Rachael for taking such a beautiful photo. And book nerds, you’ll notice that the majority of the books I picked are Canadian.

(Press Release)

RALLY TO PROTEST ARTS FUNDING CUTS IN B.C.

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Where: In front of the Vancouver Art Gallery, 750 Hornby Street
When: Wednesday, September 9th, 2009 at noon
Wear Gray – the colour of life without art
Bring your family, friends, board members, audiences – anyone who feels that the cultural life of BC is important.

—–

British Columbia’s arts and culture sector is being decimated by a government that is clearly contemptuous of one of the province’s most productive economic sectors.

Arts funding has and is being cut despite recent headlines telling us it has been “restored” – This is only for a few and only temporarily. Despite what we are being told, the figures we have at present tell us that our sector will be cut by up to 92% by the end of this government’s mandate. This while their own studies show that for every $1 they invest, they receive a return of $1.38 in taxes.

We ask you to consider the ways that arts and culture touch your daily lives at home, in the streets, your children in schools, on TV, your music, on the internet, in videogames and in theatres. We ask you to think about culture as part of our individual and community identities, a way to connect with our origins with who we are today, and with what we care about.

Our world would be a gray place without our art and culture. Art is not a frill. Culture matters.

Please join.

For more information, visit the following links:
http://www.vancouversun.com/Victoria+backs+down+arts+funding+cuts+after+outcry/1957999/story.html
http://www.straight.com/content/arts/arts-notes
http://www.allianceforarts.com/
http://www.theprovince.com/life/Gambling+with+other+people+money/1957693/story.html