Amazon Is Not a Monopoly and Should Not Be Regulated

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It's not surprising to see a stable trend of sales, after all, it is customers who ultimately choose which book they want to buy and I don't think they will make their decisions based on the shipping time or whether the book is available on Amazon.

Finally, let's talk about the remaining controversial strategy used by Amazon, raising prices. Before rebuking Amazon, we should figure out the business model it used. Peter Nowak (2013) explains: "the company has steeply discounted books for years and reaped low profits as a result, which has been its business strategy. If it now wants to raise prices and therefore margins, that’s well within its prerogative. That’s how retailing works."If customers think the books are too expensive for them to afford, they can always choose another source. With regard to book publishers, it seems that they can never be satisfied: first they complained Amazon was selling books too cheaply and now they are complaining that the books are too expensive. Forget about it, it's just self-interest talking.

In fact, if we think it over, Amazon is not only offering readers a massive selection at low prices and convenient shipping, it is also providing authors a lot of benefits, for example, the self publishing program which has allowed thousands of authors to publish and market their work despite major publishers (Bobbie Johnson, 2012). Authors no longer have to accept negligible upfront fees, restriction clause, and absurd royalty rates.

The world has changed dramatically in the last ten years, the emergence of e-book, the rapid increasing trend of online bookselling, and the widespread of e-book readers and digital publishing are just like big stones thrown in the pond of the book industry. Of course book publishers hate Amazon, they are in a much more fierce competing environment now thanks to Amazon. They just can't sustain their business models if they offer their customers the same low price. But it seems that they have to find another way to beat Amazon down because government won't regulate Amazon as long as it doesn't engage in any illegal commercial practice.

Reference

Dreher, R. (2014, May 23). Bully Amazon's abuse of power. The American Conservative.

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Johnson, B. (2012, February 4). Could Amazon become a monopoly.[Web log post].

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Nowak, P. (2013, Jul 11). Does Amazon have a monopoly on books? Don't be absurd.

Canadian Business. Retrieved from http://www.canadianbusiness.com

Reid, C.,&Deahl, R. (2014). Is Amazon really the devil.Publisher Weekly, 261, 5-8.

Retrieved from http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/

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Rodarme, S. (2014, Jun 3). Amazon is not a monopoly or a monopsony.Bookriot.

Retrieved from http://bookriot.com/

Stross, C. (2014, May 26). Amazon: Malignant monopoly, or just plain evil. [Web log post].

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