[darryl]

I know some people believe already that Amazon is the devil incarnate. However, looking at things more objectively that is just rubbish. But the whole buggy whip industry likes to portray Amazon as a monopoly. It is not (see Zombie Meme 1). However, it is fast heading that way, as much because of the unbelievable ineptness and lack of foresight of most of its competitors (and would-be competitors) as for its own foresight and super competence. In the eyes of its critics it is almost left unsaid that if Amazon does become a monopoly it will follow the grand old publishing industry tradition known in academic circles as screwing everyone, including readers and authors alike. Personally I have great difficulty in seeing how this situation would be any worse than under the Oligopoly. However, if we look at Amazon's behaviour now and in the past as a predictor of their future behaviour, things may not be as bleak as they seem.

Firstly, Amazon has significant market power already, but has shown no signs of significantly abusing that power. Certainly not against its customers. And I don't regard what happened in negotiations with Hachette or any of the other big publishers as an abuse of power. In fact, Amazon's offer to insulate Hachette's authors from their publishers greed and stupidity was laudable. Despite being a ploy in the negotiations, I have no doubt that had Hachette agreed Amazon would have come to the party.

Secondly, unlike the conspirators of the oligopoly, Amazon tends to act rationally and not cut off its nose to spite its face. What could be more rational than seeking to price books at the point which maximises the amount of revenue derived? Particularly where the resulting price point is usually half what the conspirators want to charge and are now charging under their agency arrangements. Even if this price point does become a little higher under an Amazon monopoly, I cannot see Amazon pushing prices to the point that they are not maximising revenue. And the conspirators are currently in the process of demonstrating that the market is price sensitive. Based on this, I would not expect to see Amazon's pricing policies change even if they do become a monopoly.

Thirdly, distractions like looking at Amazon's labour practices are just that, irrelevant distractions. Amazon is an employer in a first world country, and must comply with its labour laws. There has been no suggestion that it does not. Meanwhile, whole industries have moved mostly offshore, partly to avoid the extra costs associated with these labour laws. And, of course, the conditions of most of the employees now doing these jobs offshore usually don't even approach US standards. I would hazard a guess that most of Amazon's critics on this aspect of their operations have no qualms buying products produced offshore in far worse conditions than at Amazon, even if the worst of the Amazon Horror stories were completely true.

On the other side, there are some things about Amazon which do trouble me. Firstly, the 1984 incident was a blot on their record which will take some time to live down. It has happened once, and potentially can happen again. Mitigating this slightly is the fact that Amazon responded to the criticism and realised its mistake. However, there is also evidence in the Mobileread forums of Amazon acting with unbelievable arrogance and total disregard of its customers and basic fairness. These threads involve cancelling or denying access to users own accounts where Amazon believes its terms have been breached or that the account is related to another account where its terms were breached. In such cases they appear to refuse to disclose information about the breach or, if applicable, the other accounts. They also appear to phrase their notification along the lines of their decision being final and not subject to review, and force their victims to correspond by email as the Amazon personnel dealing with these matters will not talk on the phone to sort it out. This must be very distressing to those involved, and bas no place at a company like Amazon. If Amazon does become a monopoly losing access to your Amazon account could be a disaster.

Overall, I think Amazon's conduct to date tends to indicate that if they did become a monopoly Amazon would not abuse retail pricing. Nor would there be any need for it to adjust its royalty rates to authors, though final author remuneration must be regarded as still being worked out in relation to KU. If subscription models are indeed the future as some suggest, then it is difficult to even speculate on authors remuneration with any authority. I can't even exclude the possibility that Royalties could fall to poverty line levels. Say as low as 17.6%?