When representatives of the four major bookstore chains held a press conference last Friday, 4pm to announce that they will not be selling HP7 to walk-in customers, most people were unaware until the next morning. The unanimous decision was made in an apparent move to pressure local distributor, Penguin to ‘do something’ following the indiscriminately-priced HP7 by two hyper-marts advertised on the same day.

Today HP7 is back on shelves after some negotiation between the bookstores and Penguin. HP7 will be offered at a discounted rate of 20%–25% from the original retail price of RM109.90 to customers. Pre-order customers can expect to get some refunds.

It is not fair to label booksellers as childish for refusing to sell HP7 in retaliation to the lowered price by hyper-marts. Yes, competition is vital to stay relevant in any business, but healthy this isn’t. Hyper-marts are loss leaders. Why ruin the book industry market in the name of attracting customers not to buy books but other consumer products? If this plan is successful, there’s no stopping them to adopt the same tactic to other bestselling titles. I hope local book distributors are learning something out of this.

Booksellers not only represent major bookstore chains but independent bookstores as well. Major chains will always be able to find a means to cover their losses through other bulk orders, but what can independent stores fall back on? Although saddened by the dampened Harry Potter celebrations, I fully support the decision made by the four booksellers as it is a brave move to stand up against bullies who threaten to break the booksellers’ rice bowls. After all, books are the main products of a bookseller.

Although books are not controlled items, they are regulated entities. As long as books are not priced above the recommended retail price, publishers / distributors / booksellers are not doing any wrong. The hyper-marts move to price HP7 at RM69.90 gives booksellers a bad impression that they are a load of greedy profiteers. It is standard practice to mark up at least 40% and even so booksellers are not making sky-rocketing profits.

Some people remarked that books are expensive and not affordable in Malaysia. Really? Let’s take the price of a normal paperback novel which retails at about RM34.90. If you purchase one novel per month, that’s about RM1.16 spent per day. Is that not affordable say, compared to two movie tickets and popcorn on a weekend night? That’s about RM30.00 spent for a mere two-hour gratification. Hardbacks are always much costlier than paperbacks and the latter is usually released at least six months later. So what is there to complain when the more affordable version is on its way?

In the long run, books are not actually expensive. Books are knowledge pitchers, meant to be reread and passed down to future generations. I’m sorry that some people read a book and sell it away because they think they are done with it. Books are lifelong companions. Books shape your thoughts, tell you about the world outside your circle, books are worthy investments.

I don’t think pricing books cheaper will make us a reading nation, although it could be a start. In our brand conscious society, an LV bag is much more affordable than a paperback novel. But it is our ‘books are not important’ mentality that is causing us not to read. You don’t have to read a Pulitzer prize-winning book or classics to qualify as a reader. In fact I rarely touch these but instead choose contemporary titles that interest me.

Just buy a book and quit complaining.