I PROMISE not to blog too much about Barnes and Noble, but there’s a piece to it that I don’t know if people are thinking about.

If BN goes out of business, which it absolutely will at this point, Amazon has a near monopoly on the US book market. (Yes, other stores will still sell books, but they don’t compete in the same way)

So, going back to when BN was the corporate baddie putting indy stores out of business, they had lower prices than they do now. The member savings were bigger, discounts went deeper, all to get business. And then you know what happened? Once they didn’t have to compete, prices rose.

What do you think will happen to Amazon’s book prices when they have no major US competitor?

Now, the most likely course if that they’ll eventually sell most books at list price, and that’s not a terrible thing. (I am not the sort that thinks list price is too high, except in the case of certain hard covers when they’re shoddily made.) But what we should be concerned about is if there’s one large corporate buyer of books, they could influence list price in the long run. 

My point is, Amazon will not likely continue taking a loss on books once BN is out of the way, and one way or another, the market is going to change to reflect that.