Recent
events involving two titans of the business world—Apple and Amazon—could have a
huge ripple effect on anyone who sells or consumes reading materials. It’s just
not clear what sort of effect that will be.
First,
the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division handed down its recommendedpunishment for Apple’s part in setting e-book prices with five publishers. As
expected, the DOJ wants to prevent Apple from negotiating any new publisher
agreements that would constrain price competition. However, the DOJ goes beyond
that, insisting Apple should for five years dodge any pricing agreements with
other suppliers of content, including movies and TV shows, music, e-books, or
other digital products.
In
addition, for a two-year period, the DOJ wants Apple to permit its competitors,
including Amazon and Barnes & Noble, to sell e-books through their iOS apps
without taking a 30% cut of the action. B&N and Amazon both disabled their
in-app selling to avoid paying the commission, forcing users to click a few more
times to buy e-books through a web browser.
Consumers
think the recommendations are dandy, especially those with iOS devices, because
they think e-book prices will drop across the board. Yet, that’s not a given. Since
the court decision, Amazon has both raised and lowered book prices.
More
recently, Amazon indirectly made waves when its founder, Jeff Bezos, bought The Washington Post and related
newspaper properties. Bezos made the purchase out of his own wallet, not
Amazon’s, but most pundits (including The
Post’s own bloggers) assume he’ll haul The
Post more firmly into the digital realm and set a new standard for the news
industry, just as he did with bookselling.
