Price Gap Between Borders, Amazon Causes Split 
  Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008

Image via sergei.y

I stood in line to purchase two books at Border's recently.  I usually buy my books over the internet because they are far more inexpensive that way - but the look, the smell, the stacks of brand new books...everything about Border's book store lures me in.  These days, it's much more of a luxury.  I put two hardcover books on the counter; nothing very thick, they weren't hefty bound books and there were no glossy photo pages in them (I say this because I recall my jaw dropping at The DaVinci Code color photo edition that emptied my wallet a few years back).  Just regular old text books, one a new release and one was not.  The total for my two books was nearly $55.  I looked at the electronic price register with a face like I'd just seen two headless clowns walk by.

"Fifty-five dollars?  I should have bought one of those empty journals with the pages trimmed in gold," I say.  Yes, I was one of those annoying consumers that talks up the counter clerk at a chain store about rising prices.  As if they have a say in it.

I ask the employee - whom I recognize as having worked there for quite a long time - why the prices vary so greatly from Amazon.com, with whom Borders has been affiliated in an online partnership since April of 2001, almost seven years to the day.

I'd been about to inquire about going on a waiting list for Revolution: A Manifesto by Ron Paul, which is supposed to be stocked April 28th on Amazon and I'm chomping at the bit for.  I do ask, and Border's price will be over $21.  Amazon's is $12.60 & up.

"We won't be affiliated with Amazon much longer," she says, as she closes to the window to sign me up for the Ron Paul book.  I had apologized to her but said I couldn't afford to pay almost double when I could just order it online.  "We can't afford to undercut ourselves like that anymore.  The publishing companies determine the prices, not us."

In fact, Borders Group announced over a year ago that they were severing ties with Amazon--though the split has not been executed on the web--and its been reported that Borders plans to launch it's own site independent of Amazon as soon as this month.

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