Bookstore owner Barnes & Noble Inc. (NYSE: BKS) will no longer carry books published by a division of Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) in the chain’s 700 or so bricks-and-mortar stores. B&N will sell the books through its on-line stores.
B&N is protesting Amazon’s tactic of signing exclusive deals with publishers and writers. Such deals lock-out other publishers and booksellers, and according to B&N, have “undermined the industry as a whole and have prevented millions of customers from having access to content.”
Well, that’s not exactly the case. The customers can still buy the content at Amazon. And if there are limitations on the target buyers, certainly the publishers and writers could have figured that out before they signed on with Amazon.
B&N seems to want to cast the dispute as a war of principle. In fact, it’s all about money.
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