Urban renewal

Author Lee Child consider's Amazon's rumored next move. Having killed off the big box booksellers, are they after the rest?

So now, rumour has it, Amazon plans to open another 299 physical bookstores (it already has one, in Seattle). The rumours are denied – or at least, not confirmed – and at first glance they appear economically insane. At the best of times, books are low-velocity, low-margin items, and commercial rents are geared to the opposite – clothes, handbags and other high-profit stuff. But then, for 20 years Amazon has proved willing to eat losses, and investors have allowed it to. 

So, what if? And suppose those 300 stores were only the start? We’d quickly approach a de facto monopsony. Amazon would become the only practical route to market for 1,400 US publishers and a million US self-publishers, for either digital or paper product. The history is worrying. Amazon has already tried to use its power in a punitive fashion, as if determined to hurt publishers financially. All kinds of fees and “contributions” are required. “Pay to play” was openly the name of the game, until Amazon’s lawyers suggested a less explicit description. One publisher resisted, and a senior Amazon executive boasted: “I did everything I could to screw with their performance.” Already, self-publishers have only “terms and conditions”, which change capriciously – so far only to Amazon’s advantage. Is it good public policy to allow one corporation to have total power over a nation’s published output?