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I'm curious whether the Department of Justice would get involved in something like this at some point? I am very unfamiliar with the legal world, but this seem

I'm curious whether the Department of Justice would get involved in something like this at some point? I am very unfamiliar with the legal world, but this seems borderline illegal for Amazon to do. Are they close enough to being a monopoly in the books world for this to be anti-competitive?

jasode 12y ago
To me, anti-competitive means Amazon colluding with or sabotaging a "competitor" such as Barnes&Noble[1] or Apple iBooks[2]. The dispute between Amazon and Hatchette is a fight between a retailer and a supplier. Same as Costco/Walmart and a manufacturer, or a broadcast network NBC with NFL football, or TV series production and an actor's contract renewal. All negotiating parties use whatever market leverage they have to get the most favorable terms possible. Hatchette can still sell via B&N, iBooks, ebay, open their own e-commerce site, etc. Amazon's hardball tactics are not barring any of those options for the book publisher. [1]http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/j-k-rowling?store=allproducts&keyword=j+k+rowling http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/j-k-rowling?store=allproduct... [2]http://www.apple.com/ibooks/ http://www.apple.com/ibooks/
- smacktoward 12y ago
  > Same as Costco/Walmart and a manufacturer Walmart, of course, being notorious for using its huge market position to force costs onto suppliers. That's part of how it gets the low prices: because if you sell at retail, and you don't agree your product should costs what Walmart thinks it should cost, you find yourself locked out of a giant part of the economy.
  - Turing_Machine 12y ago
    Walmart and Amazon sell products at the lowest price possible. That's what they do. If you aren't willing to sell at the lowest price possible, you need to be in a different market. Neither they nor their customers owe you a certain profit margin.
smackfu 12y ago
From September 2013, Amazon has 29% of consumer book spending while Barnes & Noble has 21%. Walmart also has a sizable share. We tend to fixate on online, but a lot of people still buy books in stores, and Amazon has 0% of that market. Source: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/retailing/article/59194-signs-of-stability.html http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/retailin...
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > From September 2013, Amazon has 29% of consumer book spending while Barnes & Noble has 21%. Walmart also has a sizable share. We tend to fixate on online, but a lot of people still buy books in stores, and Amazon has 0% of that market. Sure, but monopoly is by market, and if online vs. physical retail of books really is a distinct market (as, incidentally, you present it here) by the test applied in antitrust analysis (which I suspect it may well be), then the fact that there is also a physical book retail market that Amazon has none of would not be relevant, and combining the two markets to get a overall book spending market share would not be meaningful.
  - Marcus316 12y ago
    I've never bought a book online from Amazon, interestingly enough. I HAVE bought books online from indigo.ca (more often than not I just go into the local store if it's a more popular book, as it is almost certainly in stock). Certainly there are other online book vendors around? Maybe I'm living in another world ...
    - octopus 12y ago
      You should always search for the best deal for your money. For e.g. I prefer to buy books from Amazon, but I always check Abebooks where sometime you find the international edition of the same book at 20% the price from Amazon (this doesn't really work for literature, but for Math or Programming books you have a good chance to find a better deal). As a side note, you should probably check Amazon.ca where you have free shipment for Canada for order over $25.
Noctem 12y ago
I'm not a lawyer and I've disagreed with some antitrust efforts in the past, but I don't think Amazon is even close to what could reasonably be considered monopolistic in the book industry. Amazon is huge, but it has many competitors of varying sizes on and offline. The DOJ went after Apple over ebooks, but the reasoning for that was sort of the opposite of this situation. Apple was colluding with publishers to keep prices high, thus (arguably) exerting excessive market influence through their combined weight. This is a dispute between Amazon and a publisher, which is (somewhat arguably) exactly what should happen in the marketplace. When the supply chain colludes, their power increases. When they contend, their individual powers are kept in check.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > The DOJ went after Apple over ebooks, but the reasoning for that was sort of the opposite of this situation. Both collusion between players in a market (the publishers in the Apple case, Apple's role was as a deliberate collaborator in that illegal collusion) and unilateral action by one player with market power are prohibited by antitrust rules. So, yes, while they are in a sense "opposite", both collusion of the Apple/Publishers sort and unilateral action by a dominant player (as in, e.g., the big Microsoft antitrust case, and arguable Amazon in this case) can violate antitrust law.

jasode 12y ago

To me, anti-competitive means Amazon colluding with or sabotaging a "competitor" such as Barnes&Noble[1] or Apple iBooks[2]. The dispute between Amazon and Hatchette is a fight between a retailer and a supplier. Same as Costco/Walmart and a manufacturer, or a broadcast network NBC with NFL football, or TV series production and an actor's contract renewal. All negotiating parties use whatever market leverage they have to get the most favorable terms possible. Hatchette can still sell via B&N, iBooks, ebay, open their own e-commerce site, etc. Amazon's hardball tactics are not barring any of those options for the book publisher. [1]http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/j-k-rowling?store=allproducts&keyword=j+k+rowling http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/j-k-rowling?store=allproduct... [2]http://www.apple.com/ibooks/ http://www.apple.com/ibooks/

smacktoward 12y ago
> Same as Costco/Walmart and a manufacturer Walmart, of course, being notorious for using its huge market position to force costs onto suppliers. That's part of how it gets the low prices: because if you sell at retail, and you don't agree your product should costs what Walmart thinks it should cost, you find yourself locked out of a giant part of the economy.
- Turing_Machine 12y ago
  Walmart and Amazon sell products at the lowest price possible. That's what they do. If you aren't willing to sell at the lowest price possible, you need to be in a different market. Neither they nor their customers owe you a certain profit margin.

smackfu 12y ago

From September 2013, Amazon has 29% of consumer book spending while Barnes & Noble has 21%. Walmart also has a sizable share. We tend to fixate on online, but a lot of people still buy books in stores, and Amazon has 0% of that market. Source: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/retailing/article/59194-signs-of-stability.html http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/retailin...

dragonwriter 12y ago
> From September 2013, Amazon has 29% of consumer book spending while Barnes & Noble has 21%. Walmart also has a sizable share. We tend to fixate on online, but a lot of people still buy books in stores, and Amazon has 0% of that market. Sure, but monopoly is by market, and if online vs. physical retail of books really is a distinct market (as, incidentally, you present it here) by the test applied in antitrust analysis (which I suspect it may well be), then the fact that there is also a physical book retail market that Amazon has none of would not be relevant, and combining the two markets to get a overall book spending market share would not be meaningful.
- Marcus316 12y ago
  I've never bought a book online from Amazon, interestingly enough. I HAVE bought books online from indigo.ca (more often than not I just go into the local store if it's a more popular book, as it is almost certainly in stock). Certainly there are other online book vendors around? Maybe I'm living in another world ...
  - octopus 12y ago
    You should always search for the best deal for your money. For e.g. I prefer to buy books from Amazon, but I always check Abebooks where sometime you find the international edition of the same book at 20% the price from Amazon (this doesn't really work for literature, but for Math or Programming books you have a good chance to find a better deal). As a side note, you should probably check Amazon.ca where you have free shipment for Canada for order over $25.

Noctem 12y ago

I'm not a lawyer and I've disagreed with some antitrust efforts in the past, but I don't think Amazon is even close to what could reasonably be considered monopolistic in the book industry. Amazon is huge, but it has many competitors of varying sizes on and offline. The DOJ went after Apple over ebooks, but the reasoning for that was sort of the opposite of this situation. Apple was colluding with publishers to keep prices high, thus (arguably) exerting excessive market influence through their combined weight. This is a dispute between Amazon and a publisher, which is (somewhat arguably) exactly what should happen in the marketplace. When the supply chain colludes, their power increases. When they contend, their individual powers are kept in check.

dragonwriter 12y ago
> The DOJ went after Apple over ebooks, but the reasoning for that was sort of the opposite of this situation. Both collusion between players in a market (the publishers in the Apple case, Apple's role was as a deliberate collaborator in that illegal collusion) and unilateral action by one player with market power are prohibited by antitrust rules. So, yes, while they are in a sense "opposite", both collusion of the Apple/Publishers sort and unilateral action by a dominant player (as in, e.g., the big Microsoft antitrust case, and arguable Amazon in this case) can violate antitrust law.