I think you are right that the easiest scenario would be for a current distributor to jump into the game. I wonder how many of the publishers would be willing to participate.

In practical terms, Amazon often provides Ingram or Baker & Taylor with a copy of the order that the customer placed, and these wholesalers then actually pick, pack and ship the order for Amazon. Amazon pays them to do so, and pockets the profit from the transaction without actually handling a book.

Even though it acts like a retailer, Amazon and other Internet retailers are different from other retailers, both because of the “long tail” phenomenon, and because of the Internet’s complementary ability for narrow specialization. [I plan to post on these in the future, so I won't go into the details yet.] Your analysis of Deseret Book’s inability to be the Amazon.com of the LDS world is, I believe, correct, for two reasons. First, as you say, Deseret Book excludes titles, which you can’t do in a Long Tail model. Second, Amazon.com itself already mostly fills the model for the LDS market! Of course, the lack of an LDS wholesaler significantly limits anyone from easily filling this role!

So, I believe the lack of an LDS wholesaler is actually limiting the number of LDS Internet retailers. And the potential for such retailers is a good reason for an LDS wholesaler to start — such a wholesaler could make it easier to start other Internet stores.

I have one question:

How do Internet sellers factor into this? Do they generally buy from wholesellers or do they go directly to publishers?

It seems to me that if the LDS market is going to grow (and by growth I mean overall number of items sold), it’s going to be via online selling. I just don’t know that there are that many more places for brick and mortar LDS bookstores to expand to (expect, perhaps, internationally).

At one point I had thought that the LDS market was a perfect candidate for the Long Tail model, but the issue there is that, from what I understand, the bulk of the Mormon market is still books and tzochkes (splg?) the long tail works best with products that can be stored electronically (music, movies, software). An online LDS seller who really bought in to the long tail would still have to warehouse all the books. etc.

Obviously, Deseret Book’s online store is the closest the LDS world has to Amazon, but it still limits the titles it offers; whereas, with the long tail model, the seller has everything that could conceivably be of interest in the category — no matter how obscure — because even if only 1 or 2 units gets shipped a year, if 1,000 people each want a different one of your low-demand titles, you’ve still made 1,000 sales.

I would imagine the biggest issue with this, though, wouldn’t be with the seller, but with getting Mormon publishers to support the concept.

I’ve gotten off track here, but to restate — how does online selling affect wholesalers?