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Old 09-20-2014, 06:03 PM   #64
SteveEisenberg
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Posts: 7,439
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Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: near Philadelphia USA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by darryl View Post
Sharing a characteristic with other consumer goods logically prevents the bestowal of special snowflake status, unless, of course, the other goods sharing that characteristic are also accorded such status.
The special characteristics of books, at Amazon.com, are:

1. They are expressions of speech
2. Amazon has a dominant market share, such as, in the case of eBooks, 65 percent in its home market

While #1 applies to multiple types of consumer goods sold by Amazon, I can only think of one other kind of consumer good Amazon sells, besides books, that possibly meets numbers 1 and 2 above. This is: Newspapers sold for reading on mobile devices. I don't know what market share Amazon has there, but it's big.

So, what happens if Amazon gets into a snit with News Corp./Harper Collins? Would they refuse to sell Kindle-platform News Corp. newspapers as they have done during past pricing disputes concerning Apple computers and Wusthof knives? I am confident Amazon executives have enough sense not to do that. Newspapers are supreme special snowflakes, even more than books. Powerful interests, in a democratic society, should, and generally do, refrain from suppressing their circulation.

Now, as I said, I think Amazon does treat books as special snowflakes and thus, quite properly, tones down its capitalist animal spirits a bit when it comes to pressuring publishers. The question, for me, is whether they have toned it down enough.

As a public company, Amazon has a responsibility not only to stockholders and customers and employees, but also to the broader public. One reflection of this is the existence of a board of directors that has several members with a non-profit background. It's proper for the authors to make a case to them, and for the directors to consider it seriously.

Last edited by SteveEisenberg; 09-20-2014 at 06:31 PM.
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