Accusing Amazon of Antitrust Violations, Authors and Booksellers Demand Inquiry

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/14/technology/accusing-amazon-of-antitrust-violations-authors-and-booksellers-demand-us-inquiry.html

by jakewalker • 11 years ago

3 1 11 years ago

nytimes.com

higherpurpose• 11 years ago

The company, based in Seattle, now sells more than a third of new print books, a level no single bookseller has ever reached before, and it closely controls the dominant e-book platform. Some publishers said Amazon was responsible for 85 percent of their nonlibrary digital sales.

THAT'S the real issue. Stop wasting time with the "Boohoo Amazon is disrupting us with ebooks when we wanted to keep selling paper books!" argument or even the "but we really wanted to sell the ebooks for $13 rather than only $10!" argument. The latter has already been lost in the Apple anti-trust case, and the former is lost as well - nobody really wants to live in the paper-book past anymore.

What they need to ensure is that readers can take their Amazon ebooks anywhere they want (DRM-free). For instance, they should be legally allowed to take their whole library of hundreds of ebooks and move it to Google Play Books or Apple Books or B&N Books and so on (whether this is technically possible already is besides the point).

Readers shouldn't feel trapped on a platform to the point where they think they can't leave Amazon because "all of their books are there".

Fight for this and the book readers will also be on your side and against Amazon. The last time most of them weren't because you tried to sell them the "more expensive books are good for you!" argument, and they didn't buy it (rightly so).

Accusing Amazon of Antitrust Violations, Authors and Booksellers Demand Inquiry

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