Letter from the Washington State Attorney General

Well, I guess the battle is over as far as the state of Washington is concerned. Following is an email we received from them, and it looks like the course of action they have taken is to do nothing. We are disabling the form to email them, because it obviously is a moot point by now. Amazon has stated that it will carry books from non-BookSurge publishers as long as the author sends a minimum of five copies to Amazon for inventory. So I suppose that is a compromise, and it's probably about as good as we're going to do. But we still encourage you to use the form in the previous post below to email the Dept. of Justice in Washington. Will they do anything? Doubtful. But we might as well keep yelling and see if anybody listens.

Here is the email:

Dear Mr. Work:

The Washington Attorney General’s Antitrust Division has received many complaints regarding the new “print on demand” or “POD” policy recently implemented by Amazon.com. We want to thank all of those who have brought this matter to our attention and who have provided information and insight into the questions. We appreciate the concerns that have been expressed.

We have reviewed each of these complaints and we have contacted Amazon to explore the concerns that have been raised. Amazon responded to our inquiry by directing us to a publicly posted “Open Letter to Interested Parties” in which they describe their new policy.

The “Open Letter to Interested Parties” is posted on the Internet at http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-printondemand. Some of the complaints that we have received state that Amazon is refusing to sell books printed by Lightning Source or other POD publishers, and will only sell POD books printed by BookSurge. In its “Open Letter to Interested Parties”, Amazon addresses this question:

Do I need to switch completely to having my POD titles printed at Amazon?

No, there is no request for exclusivity. Any publisher can use Amazon's POD service just for those units that ship from Amazon and continue to use a different POD service provider for distribution through other channels.

Alternatively, you can use a different POD service provider for all your units. In that case, we ask that you pre-produce a small number of copies of each title (typically five copies), and send those to us in advance (Amazon Advantage Program-successfully used by thousands of big and small publishers). We will inventory those copies. That small cache of inventory allows us to provide the same rapid fulfillment capability to our customers that we would have if we were printing the titles ourselves on POD printing machines located inside our fulfillment centers. Unlike POD, this alternative is not completely "inventoryless." However, as a practical matter, five copies is a small enough quantity that it is economically close to an inventoryless model.
The complaints that we have received have come from across the country. It appears that the markets involved are national in scope. Thus, it may be more appropriate to refer this matter to one of the federal antitrust agencies for review.

For these reasons, and based on the information that has been provided to us, the Attorney General’s office does not plan further action on this matter. However, and as noted before, this is not a conclusive legal opinion and anyone feeling that they have been harmed and wish to pursue a remedy should consider consulting with private counsel.

If you have additional information or have evidence that what Amazon is representing is not true, please feel free to contact us.

Sincerely,

Brady Johnson
Assistant Attorney General
Antitrust Division
Washington State
Office of Attorney General

New Mission: Put it in the Feds' Hands

We received a comment from the Washington state Attorney General's Media Relations Manager (it can be read by clicking the Comments link beneath the last blog post). She said that they had received many complaints and that Amazon had been asked to respond. Victory (sort-of)! However, she also said the following:

If it is determined that the markets involved are national in scope, it may be more appropriate to refer this matter to one of the federal antitrust agencies for review.

Therefore, we think the next it makes sense to start over, now directing our emails toward the Department of Justice. The form below sends an email to the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice that is almost exactly the same as the one used for Washington state.

Name:

Email:

Personalized Content for Message:


Type the following verification code into the box:

If you would like to contact the Dept. of Justice directly, here is the info:

E-mail

antitrust.complaints@usdoj.gov

Mail

Citizen Complaint Center
Antitrust Division
950 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Room 3322
Washington, DC 20530

Phone

1-888-647-3258 (toll free in the U.S. and Canada) or 202-307-2040

Please Respond to the State of Washington

Today we received an email from the Washington state's attorney general's office with the following text:

In order to properly process your complaint, we will need you to fill out the attached complaint form and provide us further information. I have also attached the link to our online form from our website which contains the same form for a speedier transmittal.

https://fortress.wa.gov/atg/formhandler/ago/AntitrustComplaint.aspx

So it looks like to "officially" submit a complaint, you have to use the form on their site. So now we ask that you please use the above URL to submit your compliant (although you can certainly feel free to continue using our email form as well). This issue seems to be dying down considerably, and no action has been taken. If you care about this, you need to continue to help us make noise. Otherwise, Amazon will win...and independent authors and publishing companies will lose.

Write the Government About Amazon's Illegal Activity - We've Made it Easy!

Want to make a difference in the fight to stop Amazon.com's anti-competitive activities? Amazon isn't going to pay much attention to you or me...but they will listen to antitrust lawyers of the state of Washington. We've made it easy to let Washington state's government know that you do not approve of what Amazon is doing. Just type your name and email address in the boxes below and click Submit to send an email to monopoly@atg.wa.gov. The text contained in the email is below the form. You can also add your own personalized text to the message with the text box labeled Personalized Message. The Washington state Attorney General's web site states that they recommend including an address and phone number, so you might want to at least put that information in the Personalized Message text box. If you would like to submit a more detailed complaint, please use the form at the following URL: https://fortress.wa.gov/atg/formhandler/ago/AntitrustComplaint.aspx

SORRY, THIS FORM HAS BEEN DISABLED. THE WASHINGTON STATE ATTORNEY GENERAL HAS MADE UP ITS MIND NOT TO PURSUE THIS MATTER, SO THERE IS NO POINT IN CONTINUING TO CONTACT THEM.

Name:

Email:

Personalized Message:


Type the following verification code into the box:

To whom it may concern:

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 indepenent 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 anti-competitive activity described on your web site:

Business mergers and monopolistic practices that would result in reduced competition and harm to consumers.

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 antitrust provisions of Washington's Unfair Business Practices-Consumer Protection Act.

Sincerely,

[Your name]

If you'd like to contact the Washington state Attorney General directly, here is the contact info:

Office of the Attorney General, Antitrust Division
800 Fifth Avenue, Suite 2000
Seattle, WA 98104-3188
Telephone: 206-587-5510
Fax: 206-464-6338
monopoly@atg.wa.gov
http://www.atg.wa.gov/Antitrust/default.aspx

Amazon and Anti-Trust Violation?

ATS Reader Mail --

A good case can be made that Amazon is violating anti-trust laws.Waiting for federal anti-trust action would take many years--years toget the Justice Department to act, years of trials, years of fussingover what the court decision means. Notice how long it took to dealwith Microsoft's tactics, despite the fact that the corporations theywere bullying were large and powerful. That would certainly beeffective, as Microsoft's current woes illustrate. But none of us canafford to wait that long and the squabble would not be good forwriters or publishers.Action at the state level, however, could move much faster,particularly if it involves off-the-record contact and a somberwarning from those who can make trouble for Amazon. Amazon isheadquartered in Seattle about a ten minute drive from the office ofthe antitrust division of the Washington state attorney general.

Here's the contact information:

Office of the Attorney General, Antitrust Division
800 Fifth Avenue, Suite 2000
Seattle, WA 98104-3188
Telephone: 206-587-5510 Fax: 206-464-6338
http://www.atg.wa.gov/Antitrust/default.aspx

Note the remark on their web page that "The Antitrust Division onlyprocesses complaints that involve either Washington State residents orbusinesses located in Washington State." The state level is where mostactions against business misbehavior takes place, because it's quickerand cheaper at that level. Amazon is in Washington state, so itmatters not where you live, even outside the U.S. If Amazon can makethis policy stick here, they'll export it to their web stores inEurope and Asia.

If you're a publisher, encourage your authors to contact them. If you're an author, encourage other writers and friends to contact them.Be courteous and factual, explaining what it means from yourperspective. To make clear just how serious this is, you might want tocall, followed by a fax and/or letter.

You might also want to raise this issue with your state attorneygeneral's antitrust office, asking them to get in touch with theircolleagues in Seattle. Lawyers listen to lawyers.

Remember the reason Amazon thinks it can get away with this. A coupleof years ago, they got away with dropping Adobe PDF ebooks,substituting an ebook format they'd acquired by buying out a third-rate company much like BookSurge. Amazon must not merely loose thisbattle, it must get so badly burned it doesn't try this again.