Publishers vie online with booksellers

For David Shanks, chief executive of Penguin Group (USA), the logic is simple: If a potential customer is surfing the publisher’s website, why wait for that person to buy from a store? Just sell the book right away, directly from the site.

But for retailers, simple logic says: When publishers sell straight to the public, bookstores lose.

“I would hope that publishers try to drive sales to us, their customers,” Mitchell Kaplan, owner of Books & Books in Coral Gables, Fla., says. “It doesn’t make sense for publishers to compete with the people who sell their books.”

Last month, Penguin began selling about 200 titles through its website, and it hopes to expand to the entire catalog. Featured books include such best sellers as Kevin Phillips’ “American Dynasty” and J.D. Robb’s “Divided in Death.” (Robb is a pen name used by author Nora Roberts.)

“The publishing business is becoming tremendously competitive,” Shanks says. “I don’t think it’s acceptable in a market like this to wait for someone to put on his coat and go to the store when they can order the book from us.”

While no discounts are currently offered for buying direct, Shanks does acknowledge he might cut prices.

Booksellers are criticizing Penguin, but other publishers had already been selling from their own websites, including W.W. Norton, which released such bestsellers as Paul Krugman’s “The Great Unraveling,” and Rodale Press, publisher of the million-selling “The South Beach Diet.”

“It’s a disturbing trend, but probably an unavoidable one,” says Michael Powell of Powell’s Books in Portland, Ore.

Simon & Schuster, Random House Inc. and HarperCollins are among the publishers who say they have no plans to sell books by way of their websites. However, none would rule out doing so in the future. “We find referring books to our customers works quite well,” Lisa Herling, HarperCollins spokeswoman, says.

Retailers say that instead of claiming the sales for themselves, publisher websites should offer links to stores. HarperCollins, for example, tells consumers that it does not sell directly to them and instead includes a list of bookseller links.