3 ms·

The main reason this is getting publicity is that the authors are getting punished but they have no power. Otherwise it's just a standard retailer/supplier con

• dragonwriter 12y ago
  Another major reason is suggested in the earlier article -- Amazon's market power in the book retailing business (particularly if online book retailing is regarded as a distinct market) is so great that a lot of commenters have raised antitrust concerns about that power being applied as leverage for better terms in the e-book market (developing market power isn't illegal by itself, but applying it to use dominance in one market to acheive dominance in another can be an antitrust violation.)
  • dublinben 12y ago
    The publishers are completely free to sell DRM-free ebooks directly to consumers that can be enjoyed on their Kindle or whatever. They insist on relying on greedy middlemen like Apple and are shocked when Amazon doesn't fall in line. I have no sympathy for complaining publishers that refuse to actually circumvent these "bully" distributors.
    • makomk 12y ago
      They're also completely free to sell DRM-free paperbacks, and all of them do, but that's never helped them much when Amazon lists their paperbacks as "out of stock" as leverage tactics over physical book pricing because most people assume that if Amazon don't have it, it's out of print and there's no point looking elsewhere.
• Turing_Machine 12y ago
  "The main reason this is getting publicity is that the authors are getting punished but they have no power." Sure they do. They can put the book on Amazon themselves and make 70% of retail rather than 15% of retail.