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@Steve. Amazon is simply not a monopoly. Not in the first sense of the dictionary definition you quoted. And the second "limb" of that definition is so wide as to be meaningless without further interpretation. Any major player in an industry can be said to have "control" to the extent necessary to influence prices. Even minor players may have sufficient control by way of simple competition. But of course the word used in the definition is "manipulate", not influence. The two are not of course the same. Merriam-Webster defines the term in this sense as:
to control or play upon by artful, unfair, or insidious means especially to one's own advantage
to change by artful or unfair means so as to serve one's purpose
Amazon is not a monopoly in this sense either. It has competition. In ebooks its competitors include Kobo, Apple, Google and Barnes and Noble amongst others. It has so little influence over price that it is unable to even set its own for a large segment of the books it sells.
Apart from this I thought you were striving for balance in your post. But let's be clear. Amazon is not a monopoly! This claim is probably the worst of the Joe Konrath Zombie Memes. It's not going to die amongst the likes of the New York Times or Authors United, but perhaps we can at least preserve some semblance of logic and rationality here on Mobileread? A Haven from the Zombie Apocalypse in Publishing? A place where we can let the truly demolished memes like this rest in peace?
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