Government’s failure to prohibit platform monopolists from discriminating exemplified in Amazon’s continued anti-competitive behavior against publishers and authors

WASHINGTON – Today, Harper’s Magazine published “The Big Tech Extortion Racket: How Google, Amazon, and Facebook control our lives,” by Barry Lynn, executive director of Open Markets Institute and author of the forthcoming book Liberty From All Masters. The Harper’s article details how Amazon, Google, and Facebook manipulate flows of news, information, and commerce in ways that allow them to extort and silence publishers, authors, journalists, and others. 

In tandem with the story, the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers, and the American Booksellers Association sent a joint letter to the House Antitrust Subcommittee urging action against Amazon for utilizing discrimination and other unfair and illegal tactics to control the book market.

“We have been saying for years that platform monopolies such as Amazon are given too much free rein to treat every seller and buyer differently,” Lynn said. “Amazon’s license to discriminate, especially when it comes to manipulating which books we read, has supercharged the corporation’s attack on free speech and American democracy as a whole.”  

Douglas Preston, president of the Authors Guild, said, “Amazon controls more than 80% of online book sales. Their escalating demands on publishers for more money is a major reason why America’s authors have seen their incomes plummet by almost half in 10 years. This makes it far harder for authors to write the sorts of books that our democracy needs now. Even more dangerous is Amazon’s practice of arbitrarily promoting certain books, while all but hiding other books from the reader. The time has come for our law enforcers to enforce the law.”

Importantly, attitudes finally appear to be changing. “The recent hard-hitting hearings by Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) demonstrate that Congress is ready to demand that regulators impose long-overdue nondiscrimination rules on the platform monopolists and address the dangers posed by their manipulation machines,” Lynn said. “We stand with the authors, publishers, and booksellers speaking out today, and with all other defenders of American democracy.”

Finally, Open Markets salutes the courageous team at Harper’s, which has long been one of the few publications willing to stand up openly to these dangerous private powers.

Background: 

Read the full author and publisher letter here.

Read and download the full Harper’s piece here.

Previous letters and statements to the Justice Department sent by Open Markets and groups in 2016 calling for an investigation into Amazon.

In April 2020, Open Markets sent a letter to House Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law on self-dealing by platform monopolies.

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