The Stationers Guild

The New York Times reports that a price war is developing in the merchandising of books that threatens to destroy the industry.  New York Times writer, Motoko Rich, says that a price war between Wal-Mart and Amazon accelerated on Friday with many bestsellers offered online at $8.99. 

Writes Motoko Rich, “Publishers, booksellers, agents and authors, meanwhile, fretted that the battle was taking prices for certain hardcover titles so low that it could fundamentally damage the industry and ability of future authors to write or publish new works.”   If you like Chainsaw Al, you’ve got to love Wal-Mart.  Once Wal-Mart  gets a stranglehold on an industry the resulting landscape will be as barren as Georgia after Sherman’s march to to the sea during the Civil War. 

A similar, but not so dramatic, battle is taking place in the stationery industry.  Yep!  Wal-Mart has got its paw into this industry too, selling greeting cards for $0.46.  American Greetings and many other greeting card companies are suffering by these predatory practices of Wal-Mart.  As Wal-Mart pushes for the last cent from its suppliers to provide the “cheapest” product on the market, hundreds if not thousands of artisans, craftspeople, workers and families are displaced and marginalized by their practices.  

While the current bestseller from Amazon, Wal-Mart and the town bookstore are identical, one might ask “why should I pay more?”   I guess it is for the same reason why discerning consumers pay more for “green” energy:  they are concerned by the implications of their purchasing decisions.    I think it would be a stretch of credulity to assume that Wal-Mart really cares about the future generations of authors, craftspeople and artisans that no longer can support themselves in an industry dessimated by Wal-Mart.   I guess these would-be artisans will be obliged to lay down their paint brushes, sell their Heidelberg presses and donate their book-binding tools to museums and become sales clerks at Wal-Mart.

As a stationer, I see many inferior designs and poor paper quality touted   as “fine stationery” by online marketing companies and their  paid internet marketing mercenaries who shamelessly promote their brand  in social media channels.   Stationers and Fine Paper companies simply must do a far better job in “educating” the consumer that there is more to fine stationery than a disingenous advertising ploy.