You can use pretty much anything as a weapon in a war, but that usually means bullets and bombs rather than books. Nevertheless, Amazon, Wal-Mart and Target, three of America’s true retail giants, have turned to tomes of all shapes and sizes and launched them at shoppers in an intense online book price war. And just as in any war, there are fears that the victims will spread far beyond the protagonists.

Independent booksellers clearly stand to suffer in what has become a race to the bottom in hardback book pricing, but analysts say that big chains, such as Barnes & Noble and Borders, could also feel the effects. Others have warned of the consequences for new authors. But the war goes on.

Hostilities broke out two weeks ago when Wal-Mart slashed prices of the ten hottest hardcover pre-orders to $10. Amazon followed suit with the same price cut. Wal-Mart fired back with another cut to $9, which Amazon matched. Target joined the fray with an offer of $8.99 on selected newrelease titles.

The ammunition includes the latest books by bestselling authors, such as Breathless by Dean Koontz, Ford County by John Grisham, I, Alex Cross by James Patterson, Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton and Under the Dome by Stephen King.

These titles would usually sell for up to $35 (£21.30), having cost roughly half of that wholesale, which means that the three retailers are likely to be losing money on many transactions.

Yet the conflict is about more than mere books. For Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest retailer, the move to improve its share of the hardback market is part of a wider strategy to expand its web presence and to take on Amazon, which has been expanding its product range for some time.

Raul Vazquez, chief executive of Walmart.com, made no bones about his company’s direction when he said in an interview last week: “Our goal is to be the biggest and most-visited retail website.”

The effects are already being felt in the book market. The three protagonists made clear last week that they would ration certain discount books to prevent small booksellers from stocking their shelves with below-cost titles. Wal-Mart imposed a two-copy limit, Amazon three and Target five.

Independent stores, which are already reeling from online price cuts that they cannot hope to match, are not happy. Arsen Kashkashian, of the Boulder Bookstore, in Colorado, had intended to buy as many as 70 copies of Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna from any of the big three online retailers offering discounts because their prices were more than $5 cheaper than the publisher’s.

The American Booksellers’ Association has become so alarmed that it has asked the Department of Justice to “investigate practices by Amazon.com, Wal-Mart and Target that we believe constitute illegal predatory pricing that is damaging to the book industry and harmful to consumers”.

Among authors, opinions are split. David Gernert, John Grisham’s agent, wrote to The New York Times to complain that heavily discounted bestsellers would harm the market for emerging authors. Dean Koontz, on the other hand, has said that he regards the discounting as a short-term promotion that might help authors if it boosted their sales.

Credit Suisse, meanwhile, has likened the possible effects on big book chains, whose discounting is more modest, to a “nuclear winter” in which innocent bystanders get hurt in a Cold War between super powers.

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