Melville House Books

The government has yet to do anything about the astonishing, predatory and anticompetitive price war over book prices going on in the US between Wal-Mart, Amazon, and Target, and so it continues unabated.

In the US, that is. In Canada, it isn’t happening at all, despite the similarities between the two markets — including the fact that the American retailers facing off right now are in the Canadian market, too. But as an unattributed report in the Toronto Star explains, the Canadian branches of those giant conglomerates are a little more mindful of “what is good for the Canadian market,” as a Wal-mart spokesperson tells the paper.

Canadian retailers, though, are “keenly aware of the dangerous waters the U.S. price war creates,” and aware that “The entire book industry is in danger of becoming collateral damage in this war,” says Susan Dyuas, head of the Canadian Booksellers Association. The price war, she says, “makes people think, ‘I shouldn’t be paying $35 for any hardcover.’ The message to the community is that books are devalued. The authors stop writing, the publishers stop publishing and the whole cultural community falls apart. Books become no different from a sweater or a jar of pickles. Books are more than that.”

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.