The chain stores are not paying for them. That's a tremendous amount of advertising that is not being made available to independent bookstores. It's about restoring a level playing field to our industry. We'd like the deals to stop. But we are able, through contortive negotiations, to elicit the company's Official Responses to questions.
Larger stores deserve larger discounts.
The retailers can then sell at lower prices. When a bookstore advertises in a newspaper or on the radio that it is selling a book published by Hyperion, for instance, Hyperion will help the bookstore pay for that ad. They demand co-op terms that aren't available to us. But chain bookstores, Merz maintains, sell books at discounted prices that most independent booksellers cannot match. Different prices are not unlawful.