"Amazon Must Be Stopped," by the editor of The New Republic

[jgaiser]

So.. The Author's Guild rants didn't work, the Author's United rants didn't work, the New York Times rants didn't work, so we now have a New Republic rant

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/1...lan-tech-giant

"It's too big. It's cannibalizing the economy. It's time for a radical plan."

And Barry Eisler takes apart, piece by piece:

http://barryeisler.blogspot.com/2014...g-exactly.html

I promised myself I wasn’t going to blog about Franklin Foer’s New Republic piece on how Amazon is an evil monopoly and must be stopped and we’re all enslaving ourselves by shopping there blah blah blah. None of it is remotely new or original or even coherent, and at some point I get tired of pointing out the same deficiencies in these clone articles. But there was one line of bullshit so breathtaking I just had to call it out.

Look, if Foer wants to claim Amazon is a “monopoly,” that’s just routine thoughtlessness, akin to a child being irrationally afraid of the bogeyman. But then he goes on to make a claim that can only be the product of shocking ignorance or brazen deceit:

That term [monopoly] doesn’t get tossed around much these days, but it should.


Holy shit, “Amazon is a monopoly” doesn’t get tossed around much these days?! Did Foer even read the George Packer piece he cites in his own article, in which Packer repeatedly plays the “Amazon is a monopoly!” fear card? Has he ever heard of the “Authors Guild” or “Authors United,” each of which has repeatedly, explicitly, accused Amazon of being a monopoly? Has he read David Streitfeld in the New York Times, or Laura Miller in Salon? I’ve seen countless posts with titles like, Amazon: Malignant Monopoly or Just Plain Evil? I’ve seen op-eds in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, all peddling the same tired, tendentious fear-mongering line about Amazon being a monopoly. Seriously, just Google “Amazon Hachette Monopoly” and see what you come up with.

[fjtorres]

Oh it gets better.
Check Nate's roundup.
http://the-digital-reader.com/2014/1...-media-circus/

Before, it was just the NYT being the NYT.

But once the New Republic got into the Amazon bashing, folks started taking it seriously enough to debunk.

Check the comments for two more pieces.
The Slate on is particularly insighful, coming on today of all days.

[SteveEisenberg]

Annie Lowrey, in "Amazon is Not a Monopoly," stakes out the middle ground:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer...-monopoly.html

None of this is to say that Amazon should not face new regulations to force it to treat its workers better. None of this is to say that Amazon could not become a monopoly by pushing out or buying up more of its e-commerce rivals. None of this is to say that its harassment of Hachette is right or should be legal or should not face some serious pushback from the government and consumers. None of this is to say, either, that our legal framework should not view seemingly benign monopolies, like Google, with anything other than skepticism.

But Amazon being a shitty, vicious competitor and Amazon being a monopoly are hardly the same thing.

[RDaneel54]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

Annie Lowrey, in "Amazon is Not a Monopoly," stakes out the middle ground:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer...-monopoly.html

Yeah, that's the middle ground.

[kennyc]

.....and Walmart too!!

[The Old Man]

I suspect Bezos and the Walton family are not making big enough political contributions.

[montalex]

Why Amazon must be emulated:

http://www.slate.com/articles/busine..._economic.html

[JSWolf]

This is going beyond ridiculous.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

This is going beyond ridiculous.

Nope "Amazon est destructa." But now it is.

[jgaiser]

Originally Posted by RDaneel54

Yeah, that's the middle ground.

Well... She does agree they're not a monopoly. An evil not-monopoly, but still not a monopoly.

[patrickt]

I love those who can't speak of business without words like forced, regulated, mandated and similar words. They hate business and a successful business if loathed.

I like Amazon. They're bent over backwards to be fair with me. They deliver exactly as the promise and when they promise. Their guarantees are actually guarantees.

What more glaring contrast can there be than that between Amazon and Government?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by patrickt

I like Amazon. They're bent over backwards to be fair with me. They deliver exactly as the promise and when they promise. Their guarantees are actually guarantees.

No, they don't always keep their delivery date. Something was ordered here during the Columbus weekend to be delivered rush to arrive on Tuesday. Well, at 2:30pm on Tuesday, they were just preparing it to be shipped. It did not arrive until Wednesday and when it did arrive, it was left as the door without anyone ringing the bell as Someone was home when it was delivered.

This is atrocious service. All the notice at Amazon showed was that it was due to be delivered on time with no tracking. So we contacted Amazon via the online chat and the girl assured us it would make it on time even though it was't actually out for shipping and it was 5.5 hours from when it was due to arrive at the latest and that the fulfillment center was no place near enough to be able to even get it here by plane in time.

I asked her "Do you honestly think it will arrive on time?". And she said yes. That's really bad service. I would rather she have said, it's not yet shipped and will arrive the next day instead of lying to me and telling me it would arrive when I know full well there was no hope in hell of it making it here in time.

So please don't say Amazon always keeps their promises/delivery dates as they don't and they are known to even lie about it right to your face.

Yes, we did get the cost for the shipping back, but that's not the point. The point is they lied to us when it was not possible at all to get it here in time.

How the heck does Amazon think a delivery can be made when the place it starts is a a few states away, it's 5.5 hours until it's late, and it's not even finished being packed?

[patrickt]

JSWolf...Amazon...JSWolf...Amazon? Who to believe? My experience with Amazon has always been stellar. They have never lied to me, whined, or gone for pity. A Paperwhite got from the desert of Nevada to me in Oaxaca, Mexico, in lest than 72 hours. I think UPS is great, too, and I'll assume you find them horrible, too.
JSWolf...UPS...JSWolf...UPS?

[jgaiser]

Originally Posted by patrickt

My experience with Amazon has always been stellar.

Yep.. Are they perfect? Nope. I've had a couple of missed delivery dates but I'd guess they're success rate is something over 95% (well over). But then, Jon..

[fjtorres]

Well, the dam broke and now it is a flood. Gotta hand it to the NEW REPUBLIC, their idiot pieces draw a lot of broad attention:

From The Boston Globe: Is Jeff Bezos really the bad guy?

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2...vhK/story.html

Here are the latest developments in the ongoing morality play called “Hand-Wringing Writers Fulminate Against Seattle-based Book Monopoly Bent on World Domination.” When we last tuned in, a small group of authors angered by Amazon’s roughhouse tactics against the publisher Hachette had mushroomed into a movement a thousand strong. Literary superagent Andrew Wylie has jawboned many of his successful clients, including Philip Roth and Orhan Pamuk, into calling for a Justice Department investigation of Amazon.


“If Amazon is not stopped, we are facing the end of literary culture in America,” Wylie told The New York Times. Ungraciously, the Times reminded us that as recently as 2010, Wylie himself was negotiating sweetheart e-book deals with Amazon. How times do change.

Now comes author and New Republic editor Franklin Foer with the stirring philippic, “Amazon Must Be Stopped.” The breathing is heavy, (“a new golden age of monopoly;” “a trail of destruction;” “There seems to be no limit to Amazon’s demands’’), but the logic is light. I’m not the first to point out that, with 41 percent of the consumer book market, Amazon isn’t a monopoly.

I’m also not the first to point out that, in battling the French conglomerate Hachette over e-book pricing, Amazon isn’t exactly kicking sand in the face of a 96-pound weakling. Hachette has profit margins of over 10 percent on $2.6 billion of annual sales. It’s not exactly running a writers’ cooperative, if you gather my drift. How did it get to be the good guy?

Much more at the source, snark and all.
(Nice to see I'm not the only one who sees the gold-plated Au(rum) gang as mock-worthy.)

And then there is this thoughtful followup to yesterday's WP column:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/v...lace-of-ideas/

But the debate over Foer’s article has largely neglected one even more important benefit of Amazon’s efforts at cost-cutting. By reducing the price of new books, it facilitates the spread of ideas. Thanks to Amazon and its various imitators, books can now be bought more cheaply and quickly than at any time in human history so far. Moreover, the search technologies developed by Amazon greatly reduce the costs of finding new books that might interest readers. That, too, expands our access to the marketplace for ideas.

One of the nightmare scenarios posited by Foer is that Amazon might push prices so low that it will end up “deflating Salman Rushdie and Jennifer Egan novels to the price of a Diet Coke.” I for one would be thrilled to see that happen. It would mean more people can read more good books than ever before. I will be very happy if someday it becomes economical to sell my books, for the price of a Diet Coke too. That means a lot more readers for my ideas.

So... lower prices leads to more readers leads to better dissemination of ideas.
(Kinda like blogs help news travel much faster than newspapers could. )

Oh, and as a bonus, from the UK, the Bookseller reports that ebook readers buy and read more books:
http://www.thebookseller.com/news/e-...re-says-mintel

E-book fans are upping their reading habit because e-books are cheaper than print copies, according to new research from Mintel.

The consumer research firm's latest study, Books and e-Books UK 2014, shows that 26% of consumers who have bought an e-book in the last year are reading more than they used to because e-books cost less than paperbacks, a figure that rises to 38% of 16 to 24-year-olds.

Altogether, 31% of e-book buyers say they would prefer to read print books, but choose to buy e-books because they cost less. While 23% of book buyers said they felt that print books cost too much, only 16% of people felt the same about e-books. 36% of book buyers buy both e-books and print books, with 42% of those saying they always buy the cheapest version available.

Good golly miss Molly. Yes, Amazon must be stopped.

Your move Messrs Preston, Patterson, and Child.... time to put those riches to work. Going the cheapie astroturf way ain't working...the facts keep getting in the way of the fear-mongering.