Oh great - more ridiculous discounts. And the poor bloody independent is left wondering where the publisher discounts come from to allow such offers to customers. 80%!!!!

I have never known an industry like this one which is committing suicide day-by-day. Absolute madness, and publishers get all they deserve. They can't see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Such a shame because bookshops are an important part of any retail mix, in my view. But not to HarperCollins, Random House, Penguin and so on. Shortsighted and sad. Still, the Chief Execs and the London staff will be made redundant with big pay-offs whilst the bookseller slowly bleeds to death.

Oh, and I would like to contribute on other debates as well, but because I can't afford the subscription, I'm not allowed to. Shame on the Bookseller magazine. There is knowledge out here going to waste, and it could help a bookseller somewhere....

Typical smug Publisher comment

The reasons are perhaps understandable but Publishers' Sales Directors
have been big on selling but small on strategic thinking . They will sell their books to the supermarkets encouraging aggressive discounting with little regard for the medium term implications for traditional retail .
The BA could have done generic campaigning to educate publishing houses on the implications of favouring product exploiters to the detriment of product stockists and specialists. [Without it being anti competitive incidentally]. Instead as we know they brought them inside the tent of BA membership .
The result is that sales bonuses were paid but the retail trade is effectively dead. It amazed me how they hunted with both "the fox and the hounds ",in seeking to supply to Wholesalers AND their customers as well ? Even today I see blogs where the publisher clearly does not get the strategic inconsistencies of this . IF publishers had withdrawn from the indie sector years ago , given wholesalers the terms that supermarkets enjoyed, then they could have better competed in their support of indies.
Now publishers are having to reconnect directly with the reader in their E book supply bonanza, thus eventually rendering even the chains redundant .
Since the start of time publishers have controlled the market . After all the NBA was a publishers agreement , as is the latest Agency Agreement , which is currently being investigated .

"Still, the day is approaching when authors and agents will bypass publishers altogether."

Now, I regularly see sentiments like this peddled on here, as if to wag a sanctimonious finger at all publishers and tell us we're all going to get our comeuppance soon.

Is this why publishers, and certainly we are, are still drowning under a deluge of book proposals? This great mass exodus toward self-publishing doesn't seem to be drying up our supply of good, quality content.

I'm sure there are "authors" (and there will be so many more "authors" out there now) who will prefer to take their book to market themselves in thia brave new world, but the vast majority seem to be sticking with us for now, you'll no doubt be sorry to hear.

RRP is a joke. Jamie Olivers book @ £30 when the ASP was £10.72. Maybe there should be a 2nd level of pricing that all trade suppliers/retailers get their discount calculated on. So Amazon, Sainsburys etc can carry on conning their customers into thinking they are getting 65% discount and B&M bookshops can compete on the bigger titles. I hearby propose this new RRP to be the P ublisher A djusted R etail P rice. :-p

I really do think it is time to get the printed price taken off of books.

I didn't really think it practical to take prices off books based on the need to sticker everything that came in through goods in,[and to select the margin in every case?]particularly if that is a very busy operation.
I then came up with a cunning scheme for the wholesaler to have each indie customers' mark up plan in our system [ just like the supply discount matrix] eg for pb , HB fiction etc built into the computer and to automatically produce stickers with prices on a sheet or for a charge stuck on for you before we shipped.
This would be done at the same time as running the invoice . In this way you could even mark selected books above RRP as well as mark down.
Clearly as these are just low tack stickers ,you could easily remove and re sticker individual titles yourselves for whatever reason .
Then I retired . Just as well Bertrams IT dept are thinking .

@ Corey T.
he has it in a nut shell, publishers should have a cost price of their "product", including royalties print etc, add in fixed cost price per item (obviously this is a figure slightly made up- but could be calculated) then add a profit margin - hey presto you have a PRICE you wish to achieve. !!!

removing RRP will only alter the % discount - not the price to pay..... as Amazon / supermarkets etc. would still pay the publisher only £7 or £8 for the 30 quid Jamie Oliver book, and so would still sell for £9/£10. while the indie would still only be able to negotiate a price of £16 / £18 and so still needs to sell for £ lots more to make a margin, as relative fixed costs per item are far more per copy sold.
so customers can still scan a barcode on their phone see the price on amazon and say mmmm no ta.

Cost price + fixed costs + margin wanted = price customer to pay.