[AnemicOak]

Amazon’s Book Monopoly : A Threat to Freedom of Expression?
https://www.newamerica.org/open-mark...book-monopoly/

Amazon dominates the U.S. book market to a degree never before seen in America. This corporation dominates every key segment of the market. And this immense size gives Amazon unprecedented power to manipulate the flow of books – hence of information and ideas – between author and reader.

Last summer a group of authors made the case that Amazon’s actions constitute an abuse of its monopoly powers and threatens this vital marketplace of ideas. Amazon’s actions, they wrote, may already be affecting what authors write and say. The authors strongly urged antitrust regulators to take action, in what would be the most important antitrust case since Microsoft in the late 1990s.

Join New America’s Open Markets program for a discussion of Amazon’s monopoly over books and what it means for American readers and America’s democracy. Some of the nation’s best-known authors will discuss their personal experiences with Amazon. Antitrust lawyers and experts in Big Data and price discrimination will then discuss the larger effects of the corporation’s behavior, and whether the government should bring a case against Amazon.

Authors United to Host Amazon Discussion
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/b...iscussion.html

Novelist Douglas Preston, who founded the authors group critical of Amazon known as Authors United, has joined with the Authors Guild and the New America Foundation to host a discussion about the retailer’s power and influence in the book trade. The talk, called Amazon's Book Monopoly: A Threat to Freedom of Expression?, will be held at the New America Foundation’s office in Washington D.C., on January 27.

In a letter sent to potential attendees, Preston said positive things came out of a meeting that Authors Unlimited and the Authors Guild had with the Justice Department about antitrust concerns with Amazon. Preston wrote that “while Justice staff did not (and cannot) give us any indication of whether they would investigate, they took our concerns seriously.”

This talk, Preston explained, is to build on what came out of that meeting. Among those who will be featured in the discussion are authors Scott Turow and Susan Cheever; Smashwords founder Mark Coker; former 'New Republic' editor (and New America Foundation fellow) Franklin Foer; and William Morris Endeavor agent Eric Simonoff.

Preston said that the discussion in Washington is centered on "Amazon's enormous market power and the ways we believe it has misused that power to the detriment of authors and the book industry.”