“In some ways Amazon doesn’t really want to be a retailer,” said Juozas Kaziukenas of Marketplace Pulse, an e-commerce consultant. Boland’s lawsuit implies that Amazon does not make much effort to distinguish between the two. (For the entire marketplace it is over half.) The overwhelming majority of these are legitimate vendors. Sagers explained.Īmazon declined to say what percentage of its book sales are done through third parties. “People think Amazon’s algorithms are better than they actually are,” Mr. Eight of the top 20 books on the list had no discernible connection to antitrust. 15 was a true-crime tale about child murders. 5 was a book on the origins of Christmas. 1 seller in the category of “Antitrust Law.” The second-ranked seller was “Mental Health Workbook,” which deals with depression and attachment theory. “Should we care as a society that a single firm controls half of our most precious cultural commodity and its automation isn’t working right?” asked Christopher Sagers, the author of “Antitrust: Examples & Explanations.”Įarlier this week, Amazon ranked his book the No. By some estimates, it has as much as two-thirds of the market for new and used books through its own platform and such subsidiaries as. But Amazon has much greater control over their sale. The combined firm would have an estimated 27 percent of the market for new books. Last month, the Department of Justice sued to stop Penguin Random House from acquiring Simon & Schuster. The overwhelming complexity and sheer size of Amazon is increasingly a political issue. But the bookstore’s less traveled aisles seem mysterious even to Amazon, like a neighborhood left by the authorities to fend for itself. It rejected the idea that the consumer experience has gotten worse. Boland’s allegations in court, though it says it is striving to understand what happened.
It feels like where every Amazon shopping experience could be heading - immense, full of ads and unvetted reviews, ruled by algorithms and third-party sellers whose identities can be elusive.Īmazon denied all of Mr. The bookstore is the oldest part of Amazon, still central to its identity but no longer to its bottom line. “The result is that the shopping experience has really gotten worse over time.” “Amazon started as a bookstore, but it’s now a marketplace - an e-commerce bucket that any seller can put their stuff into,” said Jane Friedman, a publishing industry consultant. Or maybe shoppers are shutting their wallets in frustration. After years of meteoric growth, its e-commerce revenue barely budged. As Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, once noted, customers are “divinely discontent.” Last quarter they got fickle about Amazon. But there is one more that presents a much bigger risk: customers.
There are also the devious sellers themselves, whom Amazon says it is having a hard time eradicating.Īll of these critical groups could perhaps be dealt with. Boland, who say they are suffering from the Wild West atmosphere on the site regulators, who are taking a closer look at Amazon’s power unhappy warehouse employees, who would like a better deal and lawmakers, who want Amazon to disclose more about its third-party sellers. It is one of the few companies valued at more than a trillion dollars.įor all that success, however, Amazon is under pressure from many directions. Shipping times that used to be measured in days are now counted in hours. By delivering essentials and luxuries to those stuck at home during the pandemic, it helped many people navigate a bleak moment. Amazon’s online store has surpassed Walmart, making it the largest retailer outside China. The suit, in federal court in Maryland, offers a glimpse into Amazon’s dominance and perhaps its vulnerability. The sellers also bizarrely asserted that “Hominid” was published in 1602, a mere 409 years before it was actually issued, which further irked the writer.
His suit says Amazon let Sandy Dunes and other vendors on its platform run wild with Perfect Crime titles, offering copies for ridiculous amounts.
Boland sued Amazon at the end of August, accusing the all-devouring retailer of, in essence, eating Perfect Crime’s lunch. “They eat the competition’s lunch.”ĭespite that endorsement, Mr. “Best retailer on the planet,” he calls it. He lets the bookseller handle everything for his imprint, called Perfect Crime, including printing, billing and shipping. Boland has been selling books on Amazon since 2009. He wrote the novel and published it himself. It was $907 from Sandy Dunes Surplus, $930 from Rocky Mountain Books and $987 from Open Range Media. Boland was poking around the Amazon bookstore when he saw the science thriller “Hominid” for sale at dizzying prices. That’s what happens in a marketplace where third-party sellers run wild. One merchant listed it at $987, with a 17th-century publication date. A 2011 thriller was supposed to cost $15.