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Because I’m a capitalist, I like markets. There’s something satisfying about having a mechanism that allows entry to any who would wish, and in which the cream rises to the top.
That said, there are some important things in life that don’t work well as markets. Education, which we believe should offer an opportunity to improve potential for all, rather than merely serve to pick winners and losers, operates less efficiently as a market than a public good. Health care, with all the extra bureaucracy and profit-seeking attached to our commercial insurance industry, seems to be another area where the market is not well-suited to what we desire.
There’s another area where the market is perhaps not working as well as it could: books.
The possible cause? Amazon.
The Federal Trade Commission may soon be moving to investigate Amazon for possible violations of antitrust laws, violations that book industry groups such as the Authors Guild and the American Booksellers Association believe make Amazon something like a monopoly as a seller of books to the public.
The government is looking at a broader array of issues, but count me in as someone hoping it turns its attention to Amazon’s outsized role in the book ecosystem. Amazon by itself is responsible for 40% of all print books and 80% of all e-books sold in the United States. It also dominates audiobooks thanks to its purchase of Audible 15 years ago.
In theory, this shouldn’t be an issue. After all, Amazon is just a retailer like any other, a massive one that accounts for a huge proportion of the market for books, but so long as anyone is allowed to enter the market and peddle their wares, we’ve got ourselves a mechanism for efficient capitalist operations.
But in reality, Amazon is not a neutral space where anyone gets to operate. As Dennis Johnson, co-founder of independent publisher Melville House told me in an interview last year, Amazon’s ability to dictate terms to publishers makes it increasingly difficult to stay in business and influences the kinds of books that others publish.
The Authors Guild and ABA also argue that Amazon’s size and role in highlighting and promoting books is dispositive when it comes to which books readers are exposed to. Is it truly a marketplace if you’re allowed to set up a stall for your wares, but at the same time, no one knows your stall exists?
As reported by Alexandra Alter in The New York Times, some antitrust experts are “skeptical” that Amazon will be scrutinized for its role in the book industry because Amazon’s very existence allows for more books to be sold.
Maybe so. But maybe, as indicated by an earlier victory for the Justice Department in challenging the merger of Simon & Schuster and Penguin Random House on antitrust grounds, we’re in a new era of more rigorous monitoring of the fairness of the playing field in which authors, booksellers and publishers are expected to be able to compete.
Capitalism isn’t a free-for-all. To work, it needs rules and referees, two things we have in the form of existing law and our judicial system. It seems only just for them to get off the sideline and into the playing field to make sure what’s happening is fair.
As a decided nonexpert in antitrust law, I won’t presume an outcome, but I also know that it doesn’t hurt to gain a deeper understanding of how the megafauna of Amazon influences — or perhaps controls — the overall books ecosystem.
John Warner is the author of “Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.”
Book recommendations from the Biblioracle
John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.
1. “Demon Copperhead” by Barbara Kingsolver
2. “Summer Sisters” by Judy Blume
3. “Cold Mountain” by Charles Frazier
4. “Circe” by Madeline Miller
5. “The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois” by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
— Elizabeth P., Chicago
I’ve now had the chance to read James McBride’s “The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store” and it is both terrific and a book that I think will be a great fit with Elizabeth.
1. “Look Homeward, Angel” by Thomas Wolfe
2. “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting” by Milan Kundera
3. “Go Set a Watchman” by Harper Lee
4. “The Tin Drum” by Günter Grass
5. “The Parade” Dave Eggers
— Nick P., Gurnee
Nick seems to like a little intellectual/metaphysical puzzling along with his narrative. I’m going with one of Gunter Grass’ contemporaries, Heinrich Boll, and his classic novel, “The Clown.”
1. “Emma” by Jane Austen
2. “The City and the City” by China Miéville
3. “The Man Who Died Twice” by Richard Osman
4. “The Well of Lost Plots” by Jasper Fforde
5. “We Were Liars” by E. Lockhart
— Grace M., Indianapolis
It seems like Grace is interested in some mystery but doesn’t necessarily want the mystery to overwhelm other things going on in the story. Rebecca Makkai’s “I Have Some Questions for You” strikes that kind of balance.
Get a reading from the Biblioracle
Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com