The New York Times:
The government’s decision to pursue major publishers on antitrust charges has put the Internet retailer Amazon in a powerful position: the nation’s largest bookseller may now get to decide how much an e-book will cost, and the book world is quaking over the potential consequences.
Amazon, which already controls about 60 percent of the e-book market, can take a loss on every book it sells to gain market share for its Kindle devices. When it has enough competitive advantage, it can dictate its own terms, something publishers say is beginning to happen.
This is a story with a lot of different angles and repercussions depending on your point of view.
I buy Amazon E-Books because they support iPad, iPhone, Web Browser, and Native Mac App. Amazon will be taking a loss on books sold to me and never make it back because I will never buy a Kindle.
This is why any one retailer shouldn’t get too much power. Consumers will benefit in the short term, while authors will have fewer and fewer incentives to create work for a market that is less and less likely to help them make a decent living from it.
Amazon is WalMart.
They miss two big details
1. ‘in secret’. yeah right. these were the same terms Apple uses for everything else. Not so secret
2. If the contracts are cut due to ‘illegal’ terms, the publishers can just refuse to sign new ones and pull their stuff from Amazon. The government can’t force them to do business with someone that is giving them terms they don’t want. Even if it means that there will be no ebook versions of said books.