Small book retailers were buying in bulk from major online booksellers because they could really save some money. One was buying up to 70 copies of a particular title -- it was $5 less a pop from the big guys than it would have been from the publisher. Finally, however, the big retailers have become wise to the trend and taken action, according to the Wall Street Journal (subscription required).

Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT), Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), and Target (NYSE: TGT) have decided to cap the number of books customers can buy online, a measure intended to prevent smaller competitors from treating them as partners. Walmart is limiting customers to two copies of a particular book, with Amazon placing the border at three and Target at five.

People need to eat, and Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) sells food. People need to cover themselves, and Wal-Mart sells apparel. You get the idea – the biggest needs may be thin-margin, and their all sure things. Wal-Mart plays in the inevitable, which makes its latest market entry a little less surprising than you might think. Wal-Mart is pushing caskets and urns – depending on how you want your remains preserved. What is a bit shocking, however, is that the brick-and-mortar player is selling its death gear online.

Wal-Mart is using its low price strategy to beat funeral homes, which have seemingly forever been the biggest sales channel for caskets. Prices start at $999 for the low end models and go up to the Sienna Bronze Casket at $3,199. Except for this last one, all models sell for under $2,000 ... and all product ships within 48 hours. The funeral homes are over a barrel on this one, since federal law requires them to accept third-party caskets.

Wal-Mart is supplied by Star Legacy Funeral Network, and both are apparently happy with the first week's sales.

The Bentonville-based retail giant is not the first to get into the gloomy business of bodies. Discount retailer Costco (NASDAQ: COST) is already in the online casket business.

While this is a week when many of us are celebrating and enjoying some much needed time with friends and family, things are not looking so cheerful over at eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) as slow sales and low traffic are hurting sales on the popular online auction site (subscription required).

This is the first holiday season for the company under its new CEO, John Donahoe, and things are definitely not looking too jolly. According to research firm comScore Inc., the site has been losing a lot of valuable traffic to its competitors, such as Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) that have more fixed-price products for consumers to purchase, an area where eBay is still lagging.

For the period of November 3 through December 14, a time when many of us were busy spending hours online researching those perfect presents to hand out this holiday, eBay was just not getting the hits that it usually does, and traffic was down by 16% from the same period last year. In contrast, Amazon was enjoying a modest increase in traffic of 6% during the same time frame.

Yahoo Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) will soon be selling display advertising and even video advertising on the website of the world's largest retailer, www.walmart.com. The companies announced the partnership Wednesday, although terms of the multi-year deal weren't announced.

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) indicated that advertisers would be able to buy ad space alongside walmart.com's product and information pages, which brings up the question: will Wal-Mart allow competitive ads to sit alongside its website pages? Display ads are graphic ads, unlike most Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) ads that are text based.

Imagine this: a customer is looking at a Black & Decker weed trimmer at walmart.com and a full display ad from Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT) or The Home Depot (NYSE: HD) pops up with a competitive model and a link to where it can be purchased. This scenario sounds like it could easily happen here.

It will be quite interesting to see how this partnership is launched and how Yahoo!'s display ads are implemented into walmart.com's website -- and if any advertiser can buy ad space on one of the largest e-commerce sites on the web. Perhaps Yahoo! will financially make it worth Walmart.com's while.

The head of Walmart.com says that Halloween sales were particularly strong. And, he thinks the upcoming holiday season will do just as well. "Customers are still spending for the holidays. Halloween was very good for us, so I suspect that Christmas is going to be great," said Raul Vazquez in a talk with Reuters.

The website may be benefiting from the fact that parent Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) cut holiday prices early this year, about a month ahead of the normal Thanksgiving weekend time frame.

But there could be other explanations. Wal-Mart has been especially good at tying its website to its stores. Customers can order items on the internet and pick them up at the local retail outlet, saving shipping charges. This combination of convenience and low price may be increasing use of the website.

The other reason the site may be doing well is the rotation away from buying goods in stores and toward buying online. While same-store sales at many big retailers are relatively flat, e-commerce revenue is expected to rise over 20% in the last two months of the year.

Or, there is one other explanation. Wal-Mart may be doing better than most investors think.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

The clever folks over at Bernstein Research have figured out that the new Apple set-top box has a problem. The Apple Inc. (NASDAQ :AAPL) iTune store does not have many movies available for download. The count is a paltry 298 films.

Competitors are well ahead in video content. The Bernstein count is 2,407 for the Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) Unbox and Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s (NYSE: WMT) Walmart.com has 1,037.

The Apple TV product is a sort of place marker between the MAC and iPod, which have been driving revenue at the company for the last five years, and the iPhone, which comes out in June. While AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) says it has gotten one million calls expressing interest in the iPhone, Apple thinks it can sell 10 million iPhones in the first year after it launches. AT&T is the sole U.S. distributor, so a million calls may not bode well for early sales.

The Apple TV could end up being a bust. Without content, it is hard to see it being a big seller. That could hurt Apple's sales in calendar Q2 2007.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.

According to Loren Baker of Search Engine Journal, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.'s (NYSE:WMT) website, Walmart.com, crashed earlier this morning. The site had a "scheduled-for-maintenance" page.

I agree with SEL and doubt Wal-Mart has really chosen today of all days for scheduled maintenance (especially since Wal-Mart advertised the site as well). Indeed, Wal-Mart may have substantially greater sales in its physical stores, but I don't think the retailer would willingly forgo the online portion of its retail business on one of the busiest shopping days of the year. Yes, despite Black Friday not being Cyber Monday, it still ranks among the top ten busiest online shopping days.

No, it seems more likely that Wal-Mart servers have crashed under the load, further proving that this is a busy day for online shopping, not just mall and stores raiding. Wal-Mart may have also underestimated its own advertising power, suggesting to shoppers to try Wal-Mart's website.

I've tried the Wal-Mart's site and it is now running, but SEL reports the site has been up and down all morning long. I trust/hope Wal-Mart will fix this soon, and if not, be better prepared for Monday or at least for next year. For now, this is a major glitch.