Discounts banned for new books

• Source: Global Times
• [22:00 January 31 2010]
• Comments

According to Dangdang. com, a leading online bookstore in China, sales of new books within a year of release account for 30 percent of total sales, of which half are sold with a discount of 15 percent or more.

Many online bookstores, including Dangdang.com and Joyo.com have not altered their discounting policies since the new regulation came into force.

"Commercial enterprises can set their selling prices independently as long as they don't go below cost and don't violate the unfair competition law," said Zhang Ying, senior marketing executive of Dangdang.com.

Publishing houses have been reluctant to weigh in on the debate, as wholesale prices for both traditional bookstores and online retailers are usually the same.

"Online bookstores are a major source of revenue for publishing houses and they are growing year-on-year," a staff member from a Beijing-based publishing house told the Global Times.

"No publishing house will part with the profits of doing business with online bookstores."

However, the three industry bodies reiterated at a press conference on January 22 that they would band together to enforce the new standard, despite it not being a government-issued regulation.

"For those retailers who seriously violate the regulation, we can unite publishing houses to halt the supply and for those ill-mannered publishing houses, we will unite distributors to suspend book orders," emphasized Huang.