To: Government Regulators
Don't let Jeff Bezos keep extorting publishers and "erasing" authors!
Amazon is holding books and authors hostage on two continents, delaying shipments, raising prices, delisting books and erasing whole web pages.
Why? Because Amazon wants control of e-books, because it wants a bigger cut of publisher profits — and because one of the publishers, Hachette, just published a book revealing just how dirty Amazon is willing to play.
We can't keep letting this corporation's "UnPrime" approach extort publishers and eliminate competition in its attack on Hachette and Bonnier Media Group in Germany.
We call on the US government to investigate Amazon for corporate extortion and antitrust violations now!
Why? Because Amazon wants control of e-books, because it wants a bigger cut of publisher profits — and because one of the publishers, Hachette, just published a book revealing just how dirty Amazon is willing to play.
We can't keep letting this corporation's "UnPrime" approach extort publishers and eliminate competition in its attack on Hachette and Bonnier Media Group in Germany.
We call on the US government to investigate Amazon for corporate extortion and antitrust violations now!
Why is this important?
Brad Stone's "The Everything Store" describes Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' relationship with publishers as "a cheetah [pursuing] a sickly gazelle." Now we're seeing the same people who published activist heroes like Lawrence Lessig get shut out by the biggest bully in publishing.