The
following is a letter I received from best-selling author Douglas Preston,
leader of the very vocal Authors United, a group of leading authors that had
opposed Amazon’s business dealings with Hachette in their dispute last year.
Now it is continuing to look at the bigger picture of amazon’s industry-wide
dominance and is encouraging authors to respond to him if they want to sign a
petition. See below and decide if you want to get involved:
Dear
Author,
Once
again I'd like to thank you for your important help in the Amazon/Hachette dispute.
I'm writing because the time has come to take the next step, as promised, and
I'd like to ask your support again. We would like you to consider signing a
letter to the Justice Department, requesting it to examine Amazon's control
of the book market.
You
may have seen the article in the New York Times that
just broke the news about our effort.
The
settlement of the dispute did not change the fundamental problem: that one
corporation now dominates the book market in the United States. We believe
Amazon has used its power in ways that harm the interests of authors,
readers, booksellers, and the publishing industry as a whole. In the year
since the settlement, Amazon's power has only increased.
We
consulted antitrust lawyers in the preparation of this letter. They pointed
out many ways they believe Amazon abuses its enormous market share. But what
concerned them most was a First Amendment issue: never in American history
has a single corporation gained control of a vital marketplace of
information. For a hundred and fifty years, Congress and the courts have
diligently prevented a concentration of power and ownership in telegraph,
radio, newspapers, television, book retailing, and the Internet. And yet,
right now, according to the Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman,
Amazon has about as large a monopoly control of the book business as Standard
Oil did in the petroleum distribution business during its heyday.
Our
letter to the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice is posted here.
(There is a much longer, footnoted document at the site, which
outlines the reasoning and sources behind the letter. We're not asking you to
read, endorse or sign that document; that is only for those of you who wish
to understand more about the issues touched on in our letter. That document
will be a separate submission to the Justice Department, but it is not from
Authors United.)
If
you would like to sign the letter, please email me back with the phrase,
"I will sign" in the subject line. This is an opt-in effort: I will
only put your name on the letter if I get an email from you authorizing me to
do so. If you don't wish to sign, you do not need to respond to this email.
I am
very much hoping you will stay with us for this effort. This is a far bigger
issue than the Amazon/Hachette dispute. This is about preserving diversity
and competition in the publishing industry and protecting the ability of
authors to earn a decent living. Most of all, it is about maintaining the
free flow of ideas in our society.
Warm
regards,
Douglas
Preston
P.S.
I might add that the Authors Guild helped write this letter, and the American
Booksellers Association and the Association of Authors' Representatives have
strongly endorsed it.
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