AN online shopping mall, 360buy, recently offered a 70 percent discount on all of its books, which has drawn customers from both bookstores and other online booksellers, such as Dangdang and Amazon China.

    A fierce pricing competition is going on among China’s booksellers, in which traditional bookstores are losing out to online booksellers due to the higher costs of operating a brick and mortar bookstore.

    Purchase discount differences

    Zhang Yehong, a bookstore owner and publisher in Beijing, complained on his microblog that most publishing houses charge differentiated prices to bookstores and online booksellers. He wrote that bookstores pay 70 percent of the original prices but online booksellers pay only 40 percent.

    Zhang’s claim has drawn a lot of public attention. Many people expressed support, but some were in opposition. Tao Peng, an editor with the China CITIC Press, said purchase discount differences do exist, but they are not that huge.

    A bookstore from Qingdao published a list of purchase discounts, showing that most prestigious publishing houses offer discounts of 30 to 32 percent to bookstores. Therefore, to balance the account, bookstores have to sell books with a discount of 20 percent at most. Meanwhile, with lower purchasing prices, online booksellers could offer a 30-percent discount for all newly published books. Online bookstores are able to continue lowering their prices over time.

    Small local store vs. Walmart

    A book critic compared the relationship between bookstores and online booksellers to that of small local stores and the big chain store Walmart, saying that those who sell the most books can offer the lowest prices.

    Xu Xi’an, vice president of the National Defense Industry Press and the New Times Press, said online booksellers usually buy more books in one order and pay more quickly than traditional bookstores.

    “It’s understandable that publishing houses would like to offer better discounts to online booksellers,” Xu said, adding that publishing houses don’t have to pay rent or employ as much staff.

    Another publisher said bookstores buy books on credit and some bookstore owners have failed to pay for their orders. Publishing houses have lost trust in some bookstores, he said.

    Capping selling discounts

    Zhang said publishing houses could offer different discounts to various booksellers, but they should cap their selling discounts.

    In fact, many publishing houses have been unhappy about such unfair competition by online booksellers. Twenty-four national children’s books presses published a joint statement last May forcing 360buy to sell children’s books at a 40-percent discount. Some big publishers initiated a 25 percent discount cap to online booksellers last year.

    China Publication Association called for the establishment of a fair and reasonable pricing mechanism this March by capping the selling discount of newly published books and unifying the purchase discount of all kinds of books.

    Scholars suggest China should learn from other countries to eliminate unfair competition in the book market. For example, France applies unified prices to all books and caps the discount to prevent unfair competition. The United States has also passed a law that prohibits publishers from offering different discounts to different booksellers.(Zhang Yang)