First of all, believe me, I would love it if publishers came and asked me how to beat Amazon. A new online bookstore (with a radically different approach to DRM

First of all, believe me, I would love it if publishers came and asked me how to beat Amazon. A new online bookstore (with a radically different approach to DRM) would definitely be on the list. I agree with you that publishers are not necessarily beat. But you can't wave away the power Amazon has in that fight. The number of businesses that can survive, say, a 50% drop in sales for a year is pretty darn small, and the number of businesses that will tolerate a 50% drop in sales for six months without tossing out the CEO is even smaller. That means Amazon has a lot of power right now to decide how practically every supplier in the book market behaves. And they are pushing in exactly the opposite direction with all that power -- they're trying to consolidate. So this is dynamic in both directions -- it's a tug of war where Amazon's monopsony power will either increase or decrease. I feel like the smart money has got to be on increase. (See Amazon's P/E ratio.)