Amazon and Wal-Mart: Who will blink first in book price war?

Wal-Mart yesterday slashed the price of online pre-orders on top-selling books to $10. Then Amazon lowered its price on those books to $10. Then Wal-Mart went down to $9 on the books, and Amazon matched the price cut. Will the two retail giants go down to $8?

The holiday price war is rippling through the publishing industry, where some are already concerned about Amazon's policy of pricing new release books for Kindle at $9.99. It seems Wal-Mart has something to prove, after a recent story about Amazon becoming "Wal-Mart of the Web."

Update: Wal-Mart cut the online price on the top-selling books by a penny. They're now $8.99. Amazon's price for the same books is still $9. Stay tuned.

While Wal-Mart is the nation's biggest brick-and-mortar retailer, it faces big online competition from Amazon, which has steadily expanded beyond books to include all kinds of merchandise.

Wal-Mart has also said it's slashing prices on its top 200 books by 50 percent or more online. It will be interesting to see if the price war expands to more books — and products —as we head into the holiday shopping season.

Asked for comment on the price war, Wal-Mart spokeswoman Amy Lester didn't address Amazon but said Wal-Mart's goal is to "help our customers shop and save money online, especially during an increasingly challenging year for many of them and right before the Holidays."

Follow my updates on Twitter.

About Eric Engleman

ERIC ENGLEMAN is senior technology staff writer for TechFlash and the Puget Sound Business Journal, covering online retail giant Amazon.com. Engleman tracks Amazon's increasingly complex business, spanning ecommerce, Kindle, cloud computing, and more. He's been covering technology and other industries for the Business Journal since 2003.

READ FULL BIOGRAPHY

206-876-5430

@ericengleman

Recent Sponsor Posts

Seattle University Software Engineering

Chinwe Okeke (MSE’08) pursued her graduate degree while working as a developer and technical analyst for the Boeing Company. She picked the SU-MSE program for small class sizes and real world learning opportunities offered through the academic service-learning and capstone projects.

The MSE program at Seattle University is geared for working professionals with classes offered in the evenings. The program builds upon the computing experience of its students and offers courses in a variety of technical and management areas of software engineering, with an emphasis on teamwork and a disciplined approach to problem solving.

MORE INFORMATION

Marchex is Hiring!

Marchex is one of Seattle’s largest ad technology companies with 300+ employees providing call and click based performance marketing products, and managing over $100m in ad budget for tens of thousands of advertisers. Our customers range from local businesses to the Fortune 500.

Our talented and creative product engineering group is hiring.

If you are an innovative software design engineer interested in solving difficult problems at scale, across a wide array of technologies from Lucene to Hadoop to Asterisk and SIP then we’d love to hear from you!

Apply now.

MORE INFORMATION

Technology Tax Planning – Did You Take The Deduction?

Technology companies require professional advisors who can assist in all aspects of the business. The BDO Technology Practice provides a full range of services tailored to help address the changing needs of domestic and international companies. In addition to core audit and tax services, BDO professionals can assist technology companies with:

· Revenue recognition

· Business combination accounting

· R&D tax credits

· Compensation and benefits

· Business valuations

Backed by 38 national offices and an international network in 110 countries, we have the domestic and global footprint to serve growing technology companies. Contact sphilpott@bdo.com (audit partner), mreeves@bdo.com (audit partner), psmith@bdo.com (tax partner), tzambito@bdovaluation.us.com (valuation), tfiscus@bdo.com, Director, 206.624.2020

MORE INFORMATION