Quote:
Originally Posted by rhadin
How could the DOJ know this? Amazon doesn't release figures and is not a party to the lawsuit. Even investors in the company don't know this information. I think it is a case of the DOJ simply pulling something out of its rear end.
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I have no idea, maybe it is pulling it out of its rear end. However as they quote emails that the company investors also don't see I'm prepared to believe they have some grounds for items they include in a submission to a court of law until someone provides evidence to the contrary.
There's quite a lot of information the DOJ can obtain that won't be available to an investor. Investor/broker teleconferences and Form 10-K's can provide some useful information, but 90% of the iceberg is still below the surface.
Edit: Quote from the
actual DOJ complaint.
Quote:
30. When Amazon launched its Kindle device, it offered newly released and
bestselling e-books to consumers for $9.99. At that time, Publisher Defendants routinely
wholesaled those e-books for about that same price, which typically was less than the wholesale price of the hardcover versions of the same titles, reflecting publisher cost savings associated with the electronic format. From the time of its launch, Amazon's e-book distribution business has been consistently profitable, even when substantially discounting some newly released and bestselling titles.
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Note that the DOJ specify the "e-book distribution business", so they're not even cross-subsidizing from the physical book distribution business.