Target has joined America’s other two biggest online retailers, Amazon and Wal-Mart, in their noble and touching holiday-season attempt to rescue the recession-devastated book retailing and publishing industry, nurture free speech, and support the arts by — no wait, I mean, Target has joined America’s other two behemoth e-tailers in their murderously insane, take-no-prisoners, scorched earth price war that threatens to put thousands of people out of work and endangers the immediate future of the book, e- or otherwise.

It’s capitalism run amok, a race toward an Armageddon that may not only see many indie and chain booksellers go under, but publishers and writers and designers and ebook-makers and related media — and perhaps even one or two of the genius mega-retailers themselves. (Hey, think Amazon, which has never been in the black in the company’s history, really needed such a colossal expense right now, when it has thrown every resources it’s got into the Kindle and propping up those low prices?)

But there you have it, as Ann Zimmerman reports in this Wall Street Journal story: The Minneapolis-based Target announced it was matching the $8.99 price that Wal-Mart is charging for “10 expected holiday best sellers,” such as Sarah Palin‘s Going Rogue, Michael Crichton‘s Pirate Latitudes, James Patterson’s I, Alex Cross, and Barbara Kingsolver‘s The Lacuna.

“It remains to be seen if we will go lower if the competition slashes
prices further,” a Target spokeswoman said. “At the moment
we are only matching what others are doing, but we’re watching closely.
We want to remain competitive.”

But immediately afterward, notes the WSJ report, “A Walmart spokesman said it plans to lower its book prices again in response to Target’s move.” And indeed, as of this writing, late Monday evening, Wal-Mart has lowered the price of most of the “10 expected holiday best sellers” another penny, to $8.98.

Time, as Bookninja‘s George Murray put it, to watch these responsible leaders of American retail totally destroy “the downtown Tokyo of the American marketplace.”