Here’s a twist: Amazon UK is angry at British publishers for – wait for it – applying deep online discounts to their books.

From The Times:

An online price war for books has broken out, pitching Amazon against some of Britain’s biggest publishers.

Amazon is angry that Penguin, Bloomsbury and others are discounting titles on their websites, encouraging customers to buy direct instead of using the online retailer.

As nice as it is to see an online book retailer getting a taste of its own medicine, the end result will probably not be good for books:

There are fears that Amazon may retaliate by regarding a publisher’s online price as the recommended retail price and applying its trading terms to that. If a publisher discounts a £20 book to £15 online and Amazon has a contract for a 50 per cent discount on the full price, Amazon would pay the company £7.50 instead of £10. Publishers say that this would be unfair and could ultimately drive up prices.

As New York Times critic Dwight Garner highlights on his blog, Abebooks is reporting on its website that collectible editions of Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father, the Democrat hopeful’s 1995 autobiography, have sold through the site for as much as $1,798. Garner has also dug up one ad in which a Nashville-based bookseller is asking a whopping $2,889 for a signed first edition of the memoir.

Abebooks is also reporting that Hillary Clinton’s memoir, Living History, has sold for as much as $575. At the time of this writing, a quick search of the site revealed that some booksellers are now asking just over $1,100 for the title.

Of course, it would be foolish to think that speculation among rare book collectors has any bearing on the presidential primary currently underway in New Hampshire – but still, it is an entertaining notion. And as the Abebooks article duly points out, things aren’t looking good for John Edwards:

Rounding out the top three Democrat candidates is John Edwards and his memoir Four Trials. Signed copies can be picked up for a bargain price of just $99.

In a story that’s near and dear to our hearts here at Quillblog, The Toronto Star is reporting that Hearst Magazines – which publishes Cosmopolitan, Oprah Magazine, Seventeen, Good Housekeeping, Popular Mechanics and Esquire – will stop printing U.S. prices on magazines sold in Canada, in an effort to quell consumer frustration over perceived high prices. The catch is that removing the U.S. price will have no effect on the Canadian one.

In the wake of the uproar about Canadian goods priced way above U.S. levels despite dollar parity, some magazines have quietly removed the U.S. dollar price from their covers, leaving only the Canadian one.

And the Canadian prices remain well above U.S. levels.

The only multinational book publisher in Canada that is taking a similar action is Simon & Schuster, which – as reported by Q&Q Omni – will be printing titles with Canada-only prices and barcodes beginning in 2008. (For the latest pricing updates, see Q&Q’s coverage here.)

As the Star article points out, simply removing the lower U.S. price isn’t exactly a good deal for consumers, but it does take the pressure off retailers, who after all aren’t responsible for setting prices. But the move does throw a wrench in the gears for retailers such as Wal-Mart Canada, which has been selling magazines, books, and gift cards at U.S. prices since October.

Wal-Mart Canada said yesterday that half the magazines on its shelves still have U.S. prices on them.

Hearst’s decision to move to a single price “complicates our offer of U.S. pricing,” spokesperson Kevin Groh said in an email.

However, Wal-Mart also has a policy of selling magazines for 10 per cent off the Canadian cover price, he noted.

“When we met with publishers, our focus was dropping prices, not removing them.

“Our end goal is a lower price for customers, regardless of what’s on the cover.”

Similarly, a number of booksellers have received positive attention – and experienced increased sales – for selling books at U.S. prices. And while removing U.S. prices from books would probably have a salutary effect on sales, at least in the short term, the question remains whether it would be enough to prevent consumers from going online to purchase directly from the U.S.

Marketing guru/author Seth Godin has weighed in, via his blog, on the Canadian pricing issue.

When I was growing up in Buffalo, businesses had three choices when dealing with visitors from Canada (just ten miles away): they could take Canadian currency but charge a fee for the transaction, they could refuse to take Canadian currency, or they could take it at par even though it was worth less.

Guess which companies got the business.

I think you have the same choice today with the products you export. If you expect to get your fair share of the market up North, you better have parity in your pricing, even if it costs you more to get the product there.

Whether you’re a bookseller or publisher, we want to hear what you have to say on the pricing issue. What is your house or store doing? What needs to be done industry-wide? Who is benefiting from the currency fluctuations the most? Who is suffering the most? What subjects or angles have been underreported so far?

Please add your thoughts in the comments field; you can comment anonymously if you wish.

As the pricing issue continues to develop, this post will be updated with more specific questions.

As the pricing crisis keeps reverberating throughout the book industry, more booksellers are unilaterally lowering their prices. In Waterloo, Ontario, Words Worth Books is now offering a 15% discount on all dual-priced books. According to the store’s website:

This means that we will take 15% off at the till on American books. If the resulting price is below the US price, you’ll pay the US price.

There are no winners in this situation of rapidly changing exchange rates. Our prices are set by the publishers, who in turn set them according to the rates prevailing some six to nine months prior to the book’s release. Imagine that you were travelling to the US for several months and a friend asked you to buy her an expensive purse. You did when you arrived stateside and asked for the $500 you paid for it, months later when you returned. But your friend wants to pay $400 because of the lowered value of the US dollar. Would you accept the $400 and ignore the loss?

And in Kelowna, B.C., Mosaic Books owner Michael Neill recently sent a message to 500 indie booksellers and their suppliers calling for “variable discounting.” Essentially, that means publishers would offer booksellers a different discount for each dual-priced title, with the discount being used to bring the Canadian prices into some kind of standard ratio compared to the American ones.

Neill also discusses the pros and cons of various retail strategies, from doing nothing (keep your margin but lose angry customers) to discounting across the board (lose your margin and possibly go broke).

Neill’s letter is excerpted at length below.

What is variable discounting?
Variable discounting is necessary in the Canadian book business and anywhere pre-printed dual-pricing is used. It would otherwise require a very stable and long-term currency rate between Canada and the US. Variable discounting is good for the long term and works whether the dollar rises or falls.

[more after the jump]

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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?

Christopher Smith, co-owner of Collected Works bookstore in Ottawa, says pressure from consumers unhappy with the gap between U.S. and Canadian prices on books has spurred the store to sell dual-priced books for the U.S. price as a short-term promotion that will last until Dec. 31. Earlier this month, The Ottawa Citizen reported that the store’s owners decided to take this action in light of the Canadian dollar’s continued rise in value relative to the U.S. dollar.

Mr. Smith said the industry cites many reasons for pricing Canadian books differently, including the fact that many books were released months ago when the Canadian dollar was far weaker than the U.S. dollar.

“The consumer doesn’t really care about that,” he said, adding that the promotion will take a financial toll on his store. “We are definitely going to take a loss when we do this.”

Pat Caven, manager at the competing Perfect Books, said selling at that price wouldn’t cover costs, and so her bookstore wouldn’t be following Collected Works’ lead.

The promotion may make book-buyers merry, but just what kind of holiday cheer it brings to the Ottawa bookstore remains to be seen.

Click here for more on this issue from Q&Q Omni