John, I'm not in denial. And I don't call the books you bought "technical". I stand by my statement and think if you try to refute my statement, try entering in some Physics, Engineering, Biology, etc. textbooks. I'm more than comfortable with my short position and have expanded it at 70 and 73.
Try:
"A Primer for the Monte Carlo Method" ($23 difference)
"Monte Carlo Transport Of Electrons And Photons" ($32 difference)
"Computer Graphics and Geometric Modeling for Engineers"
($21 difference)
In each case above, AMZN was worst price. The best was B&N for first two and booksnow.com for last one.
Depending on the field and the particular book, one online store can be substantially cheaper than another. Unless AMZN is always the cheapest, I can't see why anyone would spend the extra $20 to buy from there exclusively. In the real world, it takes a lot of time to go from one store to another. On the net, it takes 5 minutes and even less if you use a best book price engine like bestbookbuys.com.
AMZN has nothing special. While it may capture a reasonable # of customers that won't shop around, I believe many will think a 15-20% price difference warrants using a price engine. A price war is also inevitable. Even if B&N won't commit to a war, just wait until the big publishers and giants like Bertlesmann decide to exercise their superior cash position.
If you are sitting on AMZN at $77 and expecting a 10% rise, you are hoping for a continuation of a short squeeze. I'm a patient short. And once word gets out on these book price engines, people will eventually realize that regardless of the hype, AMZN deals in a commodity market with low low margins. And if AMZN prevents access of their database, it will only take a few manual price comparisons to convince some people that they aren't missing much by not ordering through Amazon. |
