Score one for monopolies, said Jordan Weissmann in TheAtlantic.com. When the U.S. Department of Justice announced last week that it was suing Apple and five major publishers for alleged price-fixing, consumers weren’t the big winners. Yes, the going price of many popular e-books immediately dropped from $14.99 to $9.99; “that’s the bright side.” But the outfit doing the price slashing was Amazon, a company so big that it can withstand losses on every sale until would-be competitors—and a few publishers—have withered and died. With the settlement that’s been forced on three of the publishers, the do-gooders at Justice have effectively crowned Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos “dictator-for-life” in this industry. Already, his company sells 70 percent of all e-books. In a couple of years, a reader may have no place else to turn.
Oddly, that’s where the market was two years ago, said David Carr in The New York Times. Before Apple unveiled the iPad, Amazon “had a 90 percent stranglehold on e-books,” and publishers worried that Amazon’s $9.99 price was setting a standard that eventually would make it impossible to sell any books at profitable prices. Apple altered the game by letting publishers set their own prices for e-books sold on iPads, as long as no title sold for less elsewhere. Amazon’s monopoly was briefly broken. To now mount an antitrust case against the publishers is like letting Standard Oil slide but “breaking up Ed’s Gas & Groceries” instead.
Article continues belowThe Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.