Quote:
Originally Posted by jammies
Is there something stopping these retailers from buying books at the US prices from US distributors? Are you saying that if I call up some American distributor, and say I want to buy 2000 copies of Harry Potter, then I am forced to pay a different price because I am in Canada? Or are they all forced to buy from the Canadian divisions of these US distributors, who set different (higher prices)?
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Yup, if you're a Canadian bookseller, regardless of whether you're an independent small-town store or whether you're Indigo/Chapters, the only distributor you can buy Harry Potter from is Raincoast Books, who have exclusive rights to Canadian distribution of it (and have gone from being a small-time player to being one of the largest and richest players in the Canadian book industry as a result).
Not all books have exclusive distribution contracts, but most big ticket books do. Sometimes a publisher will have a contract to put all their books through a specific distributor, sometimes they'll conduct a bidding war for distribution rights (which is what happened with HP). It's not a Canadian thing, I think it's fairly universal through the global industry.
However apparently there's been such an outcry that many Canadian distributors are actually reducing the Canadian selling prices. So once this system is implemented, a distributor will put a sticker price over the Canadian price on the book jacket, which means that Canadian bookstores will buy and sell books at lower prices. Look for this to be common by January (after the Christmas rush, but that's greed for you).