It's All Gone To Pot

Wake up to find a text from sis, asking about the bookstore boycott of The Deathly Hallows. Seems that MPH, Times and Popular were not going to sell HP7 as the hypermarkets were selling them for RM69.90. 'Course, it was Saturday noon already and we were still in bed (no, we weren't gonna go gung-ho and queue up early in the morn with other diehards just to snag some quick freebies like free coffee from Starbucks...although the idea of free Starbucks was tempting), so we wouldn't have heard of any such news. And since we preordered from Borders, and sis didn't mention them as one of the boycotting booksellers, we didn't give it much thought.

Borders dangled a mighty tasty carrot in front of our faces when they offered, not only the 20% off The Deathly Hallows, but also 20% off any other 2 full-priced books. Took the opportunity to grab Philip Pullman's The Dark Materials collection as well. Sigh, the argument that we have no more shelf space in our room just couldn't stand up...

While showing off the books to YouKH he said he's gotten his from MPH, although he wasn't happy with how much he was paying (MPH only gave a RM10 voucher with the purchase, boo!) - thus we thought that the boycott was just a rumour. It was only after we've finished the book and decided to check out the authenticity of the rumour. And it turns out to be true:

MPH, Popular Bookstore and Times on Friday announced they would not sell Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows after Carrefour and Tesco hypermarkets advertised that they were selling the books at RM69.90.

The bookstores, with a total of 100 outlets in Malaysia, have priced theirs at RM109.90.

They said they were protesting the "indiscriminate price discount," adding that it was not fair of distributor Penguin Books to "allow hypermarkets to sell such a popular book when they are not in the book business."

Penguin Singapore and Malaysia managing director Eddy Teo said the hypermarkets would incur losses by selling the novel at a cheaper price, pointing out that their purchase price was actually higher.

He said there would be no replenishment on top of the opening order due to unavailability of stocks and the British publisher of the novel, Bloomsbury, had no plans for reprints now.

Great. We're actually rather pissed off with Tesco and Carrefour rather than being pleased with them - sure, offering to sell the book at a much lower price will attract everybody's attention, but how about them who'd preordered the book?! Already put a non-refundable deposit you know? Because at that time, preordering the book would have gotten you the book slightly cheaper than the full price of RM109.90 (asides any other goodies they offered)?

To Tesco and Carrefour, you want to pull off a bloody stunt like that, INFORM THE PUBLIC BLOODY WELL EARLIER LAH, AND NOT NEAR THE BLOODY RELEASE DATE ITSELF!

While we're even more pissed with the hypermarts than with the bookstores, we do wonder - why the boycott (although allowing those who preordered to purchase their copies) and not offer better prices instead? Even if it's not the RM69.90-that-looks-like-it's-cost-price, some discount would still have people lining up to get the books. Instead, the boycott, and customers end up going over to the hypermarts for the books after all.

Gah. Shall not dwell too much on it. We're done with the book already anyways.