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I read a pretty shocking essay last night in the Washington Post. It was called ““Want to borrow that e-book from the library? Sorry, Amazon won’t let you.”
Amazon is a bookseller and a publisher, and although every other publisher sells digital copies to public libraries, Amazon… won’t. That turned into a real problem when the national shutdown cut off access to hard-copy library books and left many unemployed people unable to afford e-books.
To shut off access to books to people who can’t afford them is just un-American. Did you know public libraries were started by Benjamin Franklin? (I even served on the board of one of the libraries he helped start.) Franklin valued libraries as a major tool of cultivating informed citizens, and believed they should have access to books.
As Geoffrey E. Fowler wrote in the Post piece, “It’s one thing to haggle over business — but another for Amazon to have the power to unilaterally force libraries to stay in the 20th century. It’s a price we pay for letting Big Tech get so big.”
Amazon’s hardball tactics aren’t restricted to library books. Writer friends tell me Amazon’s publishing arm uses its marketplace clout to make unprecedented demands of authors. (Like tying their distribution services to advertising services.)
Amazon also recently bought Goodreads, the book review site. (Coincidentally, Amazon is both a huge book retailer and a big publisher.) Hmm, smells like a conflict to me!
I love books, and I do appreciate how easy Amazon has made it to get them. But it’s long past time that federal officials examined these oppressive practices.
Please ask House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler to open an anti-monopoly investigation into Amazon’s exploitative book-selling and publishing practices.
Thanks for reading,
Susan Madrak
Consumers United For Fairness
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