IPA member, the Association of American Publishers (AAP) joined the Authors’ Guild and American Booksellers’ Association in cosigning a letter highlighting Amazon’s market dominance in the digital market for the advertising and sale of books.
Following the House Antitrust Subcommittee’s hearing Online Platforms and Market Power, Part 6: Examining the Dominance of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google, the three associations sent a joint letter to Subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline (D-R.I.) highlighting anti-competitive tactics that threaten the vitality of the American publishing industry by making any meaningful competition from other publishers, booksellers, or emerging platforms impossible.
“The Subcommittee’s work has shown that Amazon holds an outsized position of power and control in our country, giving it the ability to interfere with the free flow of information, ideas and literature on a large scale,” the letter tells the Chairman. “… the American book publishing industry is and always has been uniquely intertwined with our democracy. Many authors, publishers, and booksellers along the way have contributed to the marketplace of ideas, and we hope that many more will emerge and thrive to the benefit of the public. This will not happen, however, unless government officials step in decisively to exercise appropriate governance of Amazon.”
The full letter can be viewed here.
