Quote, unquote: Loss leader economics means it's about making the little guys pay

Outraged book publishers and booksellers are making exaggerated claims about how the discounts will devalue books and wreck the industry. But they’re right about one thing. The real competition in this price war is not between Wal-Mart and Amazon but between those behemoths and everyone else—and the damage everyone else is incurring is deliberate, not collateral. Wal-Mart and Amazon have figured out how to fight a price war and win: make sure someone else takes the blows.

-- James Suurowiecki in The New Yorker, trying to explain why Wal-Mart and Amazon are in a price war