• Wall Street Journal, Friday, October 16, 2009 10:40 AM

Oh, boy! This may turn out to be like one of those T Rex versus Spinosaurus wrestlemania epics where the earth is trampled, bystanders trammeled and both combatants walk away licking their wounds.

Miguel Bustillo and Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg report that Walmart.com launched a "brash" price war against Amazon yesterday by announcing that it would sell 10 forthcoming books such as Stephen King's Under the Dome and Sarah Palin's Going Rogue for $10. Amazon quickly matched the offer. Wal-Mart raised the stakes by lower its prices to $9. It's also selling 200 best-sellers for 50% of their list price.

One book executive expressed concern for authors, saying "the endgame is rather scary," but bestselling writer Dean Koontz is more concerned for independent bookstores. Author James Patterson believes book retailers might have a hard time raising prices now that they're slashed them in the wake of e-books -- not a worry for him, but perhaps for lesser animals on the food chain. "I'm not taking sides," he says. "I'm not the endangered species here."

As for Amazon, it intends to go about its business, a spokesman says, which "has always been to offer customers low prices every day."

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