While Amazon was buying up The Book Depository, Pearson Australia, the parent company of Penguin Books, was busy negotiating with REDgroup to buy Australia’s Borders and Angus & Robertson websites. Other booksellers are now calling for an investigation by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to ensure that the deal won’t give Penguin an unfair competitive advantage in the tightly controlled Australian market.

From The Canberra Times:

The acquisition, which has been in the works for just three weeks and is due to take effect on July 28, indirectly places one of the nation’s largest book publishers in competition with its core group of existing customers, bricks and mortar bookstores.

Penguin execs who spoke with the paper said that the online stores would be run as a separate business, and that there would be “very clear demarcation lines” between the two units.

1 COMMENT

  1. Interesting. I’m hoping Borders Online will flourish in Australia (it’s our only real hope for decent access to ebooks), and that Penguin will support it making available titles from a wide range of publishers. Borders Australia had previously managed to sign deals with many more local and overseas publishers than any other ebook site we can access.

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