To survive in the bookstore business, Cliff Mundy says, discounting is the name of the game.

While Sarah Palin's book Going Rogue has a sticker price of $28.99, Mundy sells it for $20.29 at the 21st Century Christian bookstore in Nashville, where he's the manager.

Mundy says he'll cut costs pretty drastically to keep customers happy, especially if it keeps them away from retail giants.

"I would not sell anything below cost, but I would sell it at cost," he said. "I don't know why you'd sell something for less than it cost you, unless it was to hurt someone else's business."

Mundy and other Christian booksellers say that's what big retailers are doing to them. Last fall, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and two other large retailers sold Palin's book and other bestsellers for $9.

Christian retailers believe these extreme discounts are illegal and could drive them out of business, and they've asked the government for help. Recently, the Christian retail trade association known as CBA filed a complaint with the Justice Department, accusing Wal-Mart, Amazon.com Inc. and Target Corp. of predatory pricing.

"What happened was that giants were fighting the battle and the little guys were getting trampled," said Eric Grimm, business development manager at CBA, formerly called the Christian Booksellers Association.

Grimm believes that the price war violated fair trade practices laid down by the federal Robinson-Patman Act. "We think their intent was to dominate the market with predatory pricing," he said.

But the major retailers deny they've done anything wrong.

Greg Rossiter, spokes man for Wal-Mart, said the retailer was giving customers what they wanted. He said the sale was a good business practice.

"We are committed to providing our customers the best prices possible," he said.

When asked if Wal-Mart sold the books at below cost, Rossiter declined to comment. "We don't get into the pricing strategy for specific products."

Illegality hard to prove

Even if the retailers sold books below cost, that's not necessarily illegal, said Mike Shor, an assistant professor of economics at Vanderbilt University. To violate the Robinson-Patman Act, a company has to intentionally try to damage other businesses.

That's hard to prove, Shor said.

"To successfully prosecute a Robinson-Patman case, there has to be a smoking gun," he said.

Companies often have good reason to sell below cost. For example, Shor said, grocery stores sometimes sell milk as a loss leader—a product sold below cost to entice customers to their stories. The store loses money on the milk, but makes money on other products.

If the CBA could prove that publishers were selling books to big retailers at extreme discounts not available to other stores, the association would have a stronger case, Shor said.

But Christian publishers say that's not the case.

Mark Kuyper, president of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association, said the Christian publishers abide by the Robinson-Patman Act rules. But they have no control over the pricing in stores. And publishers get paid the same wholesale price, no matter what the stores decide to charge for the books.

"We can't really tell a retailer how to run their business," he said.

Greg Daniel, a Nashville-based literary agent who represents Christian authors, said he understands why Christian booksellers are upset with major retailers. But he points out that the extreme discounts affected only a few authors, not Christian books as a whole.

He doubts the practice will become commonplace.

"I would be surprised if we see the same things next Christmas," he said.

Linda Dickert, general counsel for Ingram Content Group, a major book distributor based in La Vergne, would not comment on whether the discounts from last year's price war were legal.

But she doubted whether such discounts were sustainable.

"Price wars are usually short-lived and only hurt the retailers and only benefit savvy consumers," she said.

Impact is mixed

Daniel has mixed feelings about the way major retailers sell books. He likes the exposure they can give to authors.

Still he's concerned that offering such low prices will devalue books in the minds of consumers.

Kuyper shares that concern. He said that extreme discounts and the sale of e-books at prices as low as $9.99 are troubling.

Kuyper said that selling songs for less than a dollar has hurt the music business because record labels lost control of the value of their products. The same thing could happen with books. Kuyper worries that the public will begin to believe that a book is worth only about $10.

Micah Carter, spokesman for Nashville-based LifeWay Christian Resources, said the company isn't interested in getting involved with the CBA complaint with the Department of Justice.

LifeWay also discounts books, within limits.

LifeWay.com, for example, offers Fearless, a new best-seller from Max Lucado, for $18.99, which is $6 off the cover price.

But Carter said that LifeWay would not sell books below cost.

That would be unethical and bad business, he said.

"We are not going to take a loss on anything," he said. "I don't think it's worth our while to do that. We are not going to violate our Christian principles for a business advantage."

Representatives with Target and Amazon.com could not be reached for comment.