¶ … biggest online book retailers based in the United States are Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com, although the latter retains a major retail store presence. The websites of these two retailers are similarly organized, and prices are comparable. The following list of books will illustrate that Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com offer similar discounts on their products. I Am Charlotte Simmons is a brand new release by author Tom Wolfe. Amazon.com states the list price as $28.95; their discounted price as $19.69. Also, the book is "eligible for free super saver shipping." The same book sells at BarnesandNoble.com for $20.26, less than a dollar more than the Amazon.com price, which is 32% below list. Similarly, Joyce Carol Oates' latest novel, The Falls, is priced 32% below publisher's list, at $18.33 by Amazon.com and is 30% below list at Barnes and Noble, at $18.86. The Plot Against America, a new novel by Philip Roth, is listed at $26.00; in this case, both Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble sell the book for $15.60, a full 40% below list price. Another...

Coraghessan Boyle entitled The Inner Circle is listed as $29.95. As with the other brand new releases, Amazon.com offers its customers a 32% discount, selling the Boyle book for $17.65. Barnes and Noble only offers a 30% savings, which comes out to $18.16, insignificantly less expensive than the Amazon.com price. John Updike's latest, Villages, sells for $17.50, 30% below list, on both websites, so there is no discernable pattern to Amazon.com's ability to occasionally offer slightly more savings on books that have yet to hit the shelves.
Bestsellers are also priced nearly identically by the two vendors. Jon Stewart and the writers of The Daily Show enjoy top ranking on the best seller list. Their non-fiction work with the lengthy title, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America the Book: A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction, sells for the same price on both Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble: $14.97. Second on the best seller list is Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo's He's Just Not that Into You:…