Amazon plot thickens in Book Depository buyout

WHO'D be a bookseller in this day and age? The Kindle enables usto shun print, ink and binding in favour of downloading thousands oftitles onto a handheld gizmo.

Books are available to buy at such low prices online they makeWaterstone's staple 'three for the price of two' offer look somewhatdog-eared.

Falling sales as Waterstone's prompted its former owner HMV tooff-load it to Russian billionaire Alexander Mamut for Pounds 53m.He appointed James Daunt to run the shops. Daunt has said asuccessful bookshop needs three elements: "really good books", a"really nice environment" and "really good people".

It sounds simple, but the business of books is not quite socuddly. The latest plot twist is American giant Amazon's purchase ofBritish rival The Book Depository for an undisclosed sum. Its Irish-born founder Andrew Crawford vows the acquisition will not affectthe company's independence.

Now there's some concern that the takeover could increaseAmazon's stranglehold over the online books trade in the UK. OFT isexpected to announce an investigation.

The Book Depository will have made an attractive proposition toAmazon, as it had operating profit of Pounds 2.3m on sales of Pounds69m in the year to June 2010, and those profit figures are thoughtto have gotten even better. It has also located much of its businessin Egypt where operating costs are cheaper.

It wants to sell "less of more" rather than "more of less,"deliberately avoiding front-loading with bestsellers in order toattract custom.

With a father who ran an international trading business fromAfrica, founder and former chief executive Mr Crawford has alwaysshown independence of thought. After leaving security company Group4 following a two-year traineeship, he worked for Book Pages, asmall bookseller which was flogging books over the internet when theidea of doing so was in its infancy. It was eventually sold toAmazon.

Crawford left, and started up The Book Depository a few yearslater in 2004, with a desire to make all book titles available toall. He worked on the company's supply chain so that it could sellbooks anywhere for free and aimed for the small business holy grailof 'the long tail' -- selling high numbers of those low-demandproducts at the tail-end of a demand curve.

Now Amazon has pulled that long tail, with Mr Crawford's babybeing bought by the big company for which he once worked.

It's been a circular kind of plot, but it remains to be seenwhether this corporate marriage will be a happy one.