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Amazon Flexes Its Muscles in Fight Against Publishers

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31–40 of 125 posts

Re: Amazon Flexes Its Muscles in Fight Against Publishers

#31
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, they don't. Amazon is like Walmart or Google. The reason everyone uses them isn't that there are no other options. There are. The reason is that they're better at it. A monopoly is, for example, Comcast, because there is no reasonable alternative provider for the same service. Talking about "hurt a publisher" is broadening the scope too far of what a monopoly is. A large retailer taking your products of…

See, this is why I really strongly suggested that you read the link I provided. Monopolies are not, strictly speaking, about "not having any other options". I phrased my point carefully... the fact that Amazon can incur great pain on someone like this, combined with the fact that they have , strongly suggests something that may be actionable under monopoly law , regardless of what other definitions may or may not als…

> Monopolies are not, strictly speaking, about "not having any other options".

They kind of are. You can get into the whole bit where it's an antitrust violation for a group of companies that should be competing to instead get together and collude with each other, but that doesn't have any relevance to Amazon. Nobody is accusing them of colluding with anybody.

I'm not sure what you're getting at with the Wikipedia article. Are you reading the list of conduct which is prohibited for monopolies (and cartels) as something you expect to be prohibited in general?

> If customers in practice had easy and significant choices, they'd just go elsewhere easily and the publisher would feel no pain.

That's not how it works. If Macy's stops carrying your clothing line, you're going to lose a nontrivial amount of sales even though they have a hundred other competitors. All profitable companies have a little bit of market power or customers and suppliers would squeeze their margins to zero and put them out of business.

Re: Amazon Flexes Its Muscles in Fight Against Publishers

#33
post #27

These articles can really go either way, but NYT seems to continuously go the publisher side. Theres not a single Amazon statement in this article. Remember that the majority of publishers just recently colluded with Apple to essentially fuck over Amazon. Why would we afford them the presumption of goodwill here?

> Theres not a single Amazon statement in this article From the article: "An Amazon spokesman declined to comment"

And... A Hachette spokeswoman did not return a message for comment. A Bonnier spokesman could not be reached.

Looks like no one wanted to talk to these reporters/bloggers. :)

Re: Amazon Flexes Its Muscles in Fight Against Publishers

#34
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Amazon can significantly hurt a publisher in this manner, it is suggestive that they may have a monopoly power that they are abusing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly#Law (General note: Please at least somewhat carefully read over that before arguing. First, I'm only saying that it's suggestive, not proof, and secondly, there's a lot of misconceptions about what exactly is forbidden w.r.t. monopolies.)

I think this is backwards: it was the book publishers (and Apple) that were sued for colluding to raise e-Book prices and had to settle -- which is what anti-trust laws are meant to protect consumers against. Amazon using its size and some questionable tactics just doesn't fall into that category. The book publishers have done a great job painting this as a David vs. Goliath story, but it's really two Goliaths battli…

Just because it was illegal for book publishers to collude with Apple to fix prices in the ebook market to their advantage doesn't make it any less illegal than it otherwise would be for Amazon to leverage any monopoly power it may have -- as that is legally defined, which doesn't require a complete absence of competition -- in the online physical book retail market to acheive market power in the ebook market.

Re: Amazon Flexes Its Muscles in Fight Against Publishers

#35
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They make plenty of money, but that is then invested back into expanding the business, so it's more accurate to say that they don't make much profit at this time.

If that were true they would not be slowly making the service worse to try to eek out some money. "Add On Items" Removing items from being next day eligible with Prime etc.. As someone who orders from Amazon all the time (daily) I have seen a drastic downgrade in the service from what it used to be. Feels more like Walmart then Amazon these days.

Well, Prime itself probably loses money. It's a pretty classic loss-leader.

Re: Amazon Flexes Its Muscles in Fight Against Publishers

#36
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we stop with the mindless idea that the point of capitalism is only to drive down the price for consumers. The point is to provide an equilibrium between suppliers and customers. The difference between 12.99 and 9.99 doesn't hurt consumers and provides significant difference in paying authors. Amazon is unfairly trying to kill the suppliers for short term gains at the expense of the industry.

I'm sorry, but the difference between $12.99 and $9.99 is precisely a cost (hurt) to the consumer of $3. It's certainly a reduction in consumer surplus and, when multiplied by the millions of books sold every year, is a meaningful impact.

Except that the hurt is widely distributed at the higher price, but not at the lower price (where it's felt by a few large publishers).

This kind of unequal distribution can cause the slight lessening of pain for a large number of people to mortally wound the few actually producing content, leading to a serious destabilizing of the market, which requires that both parties have something to provide.

Which was the point of the GP comment, and something you didn't even remotely address, instead making a pedantic point about words chosen for effect.

Re: Amazon Flexes Its Muscles in Fight Against Publishers

#37

These articles can really go either way, but NYT seems to continuously go the publisher side. Theres not a single Amazon statement in this article. Remember that the majority of publishers just recently colluded with Apple to essentially fuck over Amazon. Why would we afford them the presumption of goodwill here?

I agree. I think part of it is that the NYT reporters see their own industry slipping away, and really identify with others who are struggling to maintain ink on paper publishing. BTW, the recent internal NYT report stated that the future for the "paper" is a thriving digital publishing environment, with a secondary emphasis on the traditional newspaper.

Re: Amazon Flexes Its Muscles in Fight Against Publishers

#38
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See, this is why I really strongly suggested that you read the link I provided. Monopolies are not, strictly speaking, about "not having any other options". I phrased my point carefully... the fact that Amazon can incur great pain on someone like this, combined with the fact that they have , strongly suggests something that may be actionable under monopoly law , regardless of what other definitions may or may not als…

> Monopolies are not, strictly speaking, about "not having any other options". They kind of are. You can get into the whole bit where it's an antitrust violation for a group of companies that should be competing to instead get together and collude with each other, but that doesn't have any relevance to Amazon. Nobody is accusing them of colluding with anybody. I'm not sure what you're getting at with the Wikipedia ar…

> > Monopolies are not, strictly speaking, about "not having any other options".

> They kind of are.

Not in US antitrust law, where market power and monopoly power are mostly defined in relation to empirically demonstrated effective power to raise prices or exclude competitors. [1] The existence of effective competition would deny these abilities (by definition), but actually having other competitors exist in the market at issue doesn't. So, the statement that they are not strictly about "not having any other options" is precisely correct.

[1] See, e.g., http://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-an...

Re: Amazon Flexes Its Muscles in Fight Against Publishers

#39
post #24

> The paperback edition of Brad Stone’s “The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon” — a book Amazon disliked so much it denounced it — is suddenly listed as “unavailable.” I like a conspiracy theory as much as the next guy but couldn't the book just be... unavailable? If they wanted to impede its distribution why are they still selling the Kindle, Hardcover, and Audio versions?

That's true. However, making a JK Rowling book completely unavailable? That's incredibly suspicious. It's pretty much a guaranteed bestseller.

Re: Amazon Flexes Its Muscles in Fight Against Publishers

#40

Boy, aren't we all glad the DOJ protected poor little Amazon from the evil and all-powerful Apple e-book conspiracy and monopoly.

Two wrongs don't make a right.

I'll reserve judgement on whether Amazon's conduct is legal or not. But, Apple's collusion was decidedly illegal.

In any case if the DoJ feels that Amazon is misusing monopoly power, then the solution is to prosecute both and not, it'll all cancel out in the long run.

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