Booktopia’s outsized ACCC penalty may have sped up its decline
Last July the ACCC secured $20 million in fines against Meta, Facebook’s parent. If the fine was proportionally the same size as Booktopia’s, it would have been $82 billion.
Books are precious. As bookshops closed around Australia, Booktopia filled the gap. It was exactly the kind of company society desires: innovative, efficient and a contributor to the nation’s cultural life.
Last week the online bookstore went broke. Despite selling 6 million books and other products a year, the company faced unavoidable challenges: rising costs and a competitor operating at huge scale in Amazon.
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Aaron Patrick was a senior correspondent at The Australian Financial Review.
