[MattW]

Folks here on MobileRead sure are a one-sided bunch when it comes to Amazon.

Is Amazon the incarnation of evil? Of course not. Is all criticism of Amazon unjustified? Of course not.

Let's state a few facts, then. For most of its customers, Amazon is a great company. Customer service, prices, availability, user experience... everything's as good as it can possibly be. So we as customers tend to be pretty happy which translates into a certain loyalty. If we'd agree that Amazon is indeed an unscrupulous quasi-monopoly that destroys entire industries and treats its workers poorly, then, yeah, we'd have to admit that we are shopping at a "bad" company. That somehow would make us complicit in Amazon's wrongdoing.

So our incentive for seeing Amazon's bad side is quite low. This is a well established psychological fact: members of the majority, the rich, the nobility etc rarely see their priviliges as privileges but as something earned (by being born in a certain country or into a certain family, by having "worked hard") and it takes a lot to even notice when things go wrong for others. Legitimate concerns are easily dismissed (often smugly); the richest one percent, for example, often tout the value of hard work and self-discipline when almost none of them have ever earned their money through work.

In the case of Amazon, the arguments run along similar lines. Amazon is good for me as a customer, ergo any company that suffers under Amazon's market dominance must be doing something wrong, otherwise they'd obviously do better (there can only be a very small number of big players in any market, otherwise they would no longer be considered big; and for smaller players matching the price of the bigger ones tends to be a real problem that can't be solved by goodwill). Amazon has air conditioning in most of its warehouses anyway (most? does that not even raise an eyebrow?). Back-breaking manual labour was the best part of my life (why didn't you stay with it, then? Maybe because it's not so much fun after 20 years or when you're older or when you have to raise a family after you come home? Or maybe it seems great now in retrospect, viewed through the tinted lens of nostalgia?). There's a reason why folks don't pay for vacation where they are working in a road crew: it's not a lot of fun for most.

No publisher or author is forced to sell through Amazon, people argue; in fact Amazon accounts for a large part of their profits. So they should either stop complaining or stop doing business with Amazon. Which is akin to saying "You either commit commercial suicide or you keep your mouth shut". Precisely BECAUSE Amazon accounts for a large part of their profit, they are complaining, because any change in their relationship to Amazon (like the new UK contract negotiations) impacts their bottom-line more than anything else.

I am allowed to raise workplace-related issues with my employer instead of just quitting. You're allowed to voice your dissatisfaction with your goverment without leaving the country and anyone can talk with their spouse when things go south instead of divorcing immediately.

And like so many of you have noted, Amazon doesn't need any single traditional publisher, but they all need Amazon. Does that mean that they're not allowed to voice their discomfort with one market player getting too big? Of course, we shouldn't take everything they say at face-value either, they're arguing their self-interests, of couse, just like Amazon.

But if history teaches us anything, it's true that when any player in a market gets too big, problems tend to follow. Not just for the competition, but for the customers too. Equally true is that times and industries change and that sometimes traditional industries need to make way for new technology (so maybe Amazon is indeed destined to preside over the death of the traditional publisihing houses).

I don't know whether we really need BPH for literature to survive (I doubt it, though). But I wouldn't sing Amazon's praises quite so loudly; they are as ruthless as most big corporations (and while they may pay $12.50 in the US, they treated their workers in other territories like Germany quite badly and when they were called on it, moved their wharehouses to Poland). They have the power to force small publishers into contracts they can ill afford (but can't really afford not to sign) and they, like all big companies make liberal use of tax-loopholes and lobby for law-changes that would suit them (and, yes, some of Amazon's behaviour might very well be illegal -- when the courts decide that it was; -- like their treatment of foreign workers in Germany).

For a really big player like Amazon, barely keeping within the letter of the law might be good enough for its customers, but don't act so surprised when the competition isn't as enthusiastic as you are. Ironically stating that Amazon [in the eyes of its opponenets] might very well have caused the stock market crash of 1929 dismisses the arguments of the other side out-of-hand. Pah, they're just insane lunatics, you're saying, next thing you know, they're saying Amazon caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.

I know that most folks here disagree with the views I have expressed; I just find it amusing sometimes how vigorously people defend Amazon (or Apple or Google, for that matter), almost with religious fervour. The very simple reason might very well have not only to do with the facts of the matter, but with the simple truth that if something benefits me, it must be good. Because if it's not, where would I be and what would that make me?

And that's why this thread goes on for page after page, one person after another patting each other on the back, reassuring each other that Amazon is great and noble (and, by proxy, so are we) and everybody else just a sore loser in this wonderful new world of technology.

Matt