Have your say re: parity
Like many booksellers, Chris O’Brien, owner of The Miller’s Tale in Almonte, Ontario, has been wrestling with the issue of dollar-parity. As O’Brien explains on his store blog, this is the approach he’s come up with:
After many a sleepless night (well, actually, sleep is not one of my many problems) I have decided to offer my customers THREE, yes 3, choices.
Choice # 1
Ignore the following two choices and be kind to my bottom line.Choice #2
Take 10 % off all purchases (except tickets) during the month of November. This is to celebrate our TENTH Anniversary.Choice #3
You have the right to choose to pay the US price, when there is a US price listed on the book.
The choice is completely up to you.
As reported on Q&Q Omni, other booksellers are making similar decisions, even as more publishers wrestle with how to get their prices down. Q&Q plans to launch a more formal online discussion group on the subject of parity soon, but in the meantime, we invite you to share your own views in the comments field of this post. How bad could things get? What needs to be done? Who needs to do it?
Choice #3 reminds me a bit of the decision by Issa (formerly Jane Siberry) to offer self-determined pricing for her music, in the sense that it adds a certain level of agency and accountability for the consumer.
As a Canadian author who just had a new book (God’s Mercies, Doubleday Canada) released last week, I’m still trying to get my head around what this parity-pricing stampede is going to mean to people like me, whose book only has one price, the Canadian one, and so cannot automatically be repriced downwards, alongside books that happen to have a US price as well. My concern is that parity pricing will create cheap titles written by American authors, while the price of homegrown titles will remain “expensive.” Unless retailers move all prices downwards, I think it may be a long cold winter for Canadian writers like me.
Further to my previous comment, I’ve noted that McNally Robinson has been offering my book at a reduced price. Amazon and Indigo.Chapters have the usual discounts.
..and after having downed a couple coffees on Saturday morning, I realize I may have this whole situation backwards, that the dual pricing affects books originating with houses in Canada that are also to be sold in the US. Correct? Incorrect? Or just time for less coffee?