Response from DOJ regarding antitrust complaint against Amazon

I received this email response today from the department of justice regarding my complaint that Amazon is violating antitrust laws in their move to force POD publishers to use Amazon's inferior Booksurge printer.

Dear. Dr. Beckman

Thank you for contacting the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. The Citizen Complaint Center has reviewed your complaint, and we have forwarded it to the appropriate legal staff for further review. We have your information on file and should the legal staff need further information, they may contact you in the future.

We appreciate your interest in the enforcement of federal antitrust laws.

Sincerely,

Citizen Complaint Center
Antitrust Division
Department of Justice

-----Original Message-----
From: Dr. Jeanne Beckman [mailto:bullies@jeannebeckman.com]
Sent: Saturday, April 12, 2008 5:31 PM
To: ATR-OPS Citizen Complaint Center
Subject: Amazon.com

To whom it may concern:
Please investigate Amazon for antitrust and restraint of trade over its print on demand (POD) requirements that authors and publishers will not be able to list and sell their books on the Amazon website unless they use Amazon's Booksurge.

I have great concern about actions currently being taken by Amazon.com. Amazon has traditionally made its platform open to independent authors using publish-on-demand (POD) services provided by numerous companies. Now, Amazon is moving to exclude any author who does not use Amazon's own POD service, Booksurge. Many, many authors have had problems with Booksurge, including not getting paid. In addition, authors who do make the transition will be forced to charge more in order to cover the costs of using Amazon's printing services in addition to the fees Amazon charges for selling products on its web site. To force all independent authors to use a single, inferior service, a service owned by the same company providing the marketplace, that will also result in higher prices for consumers, seems to be a good fit for the following, as described in the Sherman Antritrust Act:

An unlawful monopoly exists when only one firm controls the market for a product or service, and it has obtained that market power, not because its product or service is superior to others, but by suppressing competition with anticompetitive conduct.

Amazon controls such a large portion of the print-on-demand book market that by forcing authors to use its print-on-demand service, it is reducing the number of POD options to one. The harm to consumers comes in the form of products of poorer quality (as evidenced by the large number of complaints about the Booksurge service) and higher prices. I respectfully ask that you take a serious look at this new practice by Amazon.com and make a fair judgement about whether or not the company is in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

Sincerely,
Dr. Jeanne Beckman

Have you contacted the attorney general in Washington or the U.S. department of justice (DOJ) yet?

jb

Growing too big for quality service?

We've all seen it: Small dot com companies growing by leaps and bounds because they found an underserved niche. Amazon has grown because it is the "go to" place for finding books, including those not regularly found on small bookstore shelves due to the small audiences those books serve. However, Amazon has decided that it is big enough to push around small POD (print on demand) publishers by requiring them to use Amazon's printer, thereby cutting competition to Amazon's POD (Booksurge) and increasing profits . If Amazon is successful, those authors without connections to conventional publishers who try to publish their books through POD publishers will essentially lose their voice. Here's what Writers Weekly said

BREAKING DEVELOPMENT:

Monday, March 31, 2008: We have heard from more than one source that tomorrow, April 1, 2008, is the deadline that some POD publishers to sign the contract with Amazon/Booksurge, or risk having their buy buttons removed from Amazon.com

ATTN: AuthorHouse/iUniverse, Xlibris and Lulu - DO NOT CAVE IN!!! Join the proud and strong POD publishers who have refused to be bullied into paying Amazon to print their books! If you submit to this horrible action, you will hurt yourselves and your authors, and do a grave injustice to the entire industry!

Sunday, March 30, 2008: Somebody started an online petition to combat Amazon's actions here. Please sign it online to show your support. (Note: Donations are NOT required by that site to sign the petition.)

Saturday, March 29, 2008: Whiskey Creek Press is a traditional publisher that uses POD technology. We were alerted by one of their authors that they appear to be the latest Amazon/BookSurge "buy" button victim. We checked and it appears numerous Whiskey Creek Press print books are now only available through resellers. The Kindle versions are, of course, still for sale directly through Amazon.

Friday, March 28, 2008: As of Thursday, the "buy" buttons for the vast majority of PublishAmerica books were removed from Amazon.com. The books can now only be purchased by resellers.

PublishAmerica issued a press release today that states, "PublishAmerica will not comply with Amazon's ultimatum, and will not allow that company to dictate who will print PublishAmerica's books, and at what conditions."

~~~~~

Some Print on Demand (POD) publishers are privately screaming "Monopoly!" while others are seething with rage over startling phone conversations they're having with Amazon/BookSurge representatives. Why isn't anybody talking about it openly? Because they're afraid - very, very afraid.

Amazon.com purchased BookSurge, a small POD publisher/printer back in 2005. Amazon also lists and sells titles for the largest POD printer, Lightning Source, which is owned by Ingram (the large book distributor). According to their website, Lightning Source serves more than 4,300 publisher clients and has more than 400,000 titles in their system.

You'd think Amazon's purchase of BookSurge might have made things a bit uncomfortable between the two companies. However, they continued to work together, getting books on demand to Amazon.com's loyal customers. Things appeared to be cruising along just fine, but perhaps not anymore...

more: http://www.writersweekly.com/the_latest_from_angelahoycom/004597_03272008.html

Take a stand against bullies! I have pulled all my book links from my two websites and blog that went to Amazon. I think this would be a great time to create a consortium of POD publishers who have their own web bookselling business, negotiates contracts with visa/paypal/ and actual printers, etc.