“For Stephen Colbert, the Amazon-Hachette feud is getting personal,” Patrick M. Sheridan reports for CNNMoney. “Colbert took time Wednesday night on his Comedy Central show to say he was angry at Amazon for ‘deterring customers’ from buying his books.”
“The comedian offered viewers stickers saying ‘I didn’t buy it on Amazon’ that they can download from his site,” Sheridan reports. “Colbert, whose publisher is Hachette, took Amazon (AMZN, Tech30) to task for what Hachette has said is Amazon’s slow restocking of some of its books. ”
“Amazon has reportedly been pressuring Hachette to let it lower prices for e-books and ultimately pay Hachette less for them. Hachette has resisted,” Sheridan reports. “Amazon raised eyebrows last week saying that if customers are inconvenienced by its battle with the book publisher, they should buy Hachette’s books elsewhere. Amazon is the biggest name in book selling and sets the tone for book sales and publishers. Since Amazon is so powerful, publishers often have little choice but to accept Amazon’s terms.”
Read more in the full article here.
“The host produced an Amazon shipment of his own, which he said was from him and fellow Hachette authors J.K. Rowling and Malcolm Gladwell. He opened a box to reveal… his middle finger,” Tim Molloy reports for TheWrap. “‘Hey Amazon. Customers who enjoyed this, also bought this,’ he added, and then gave Amazon another middle finger.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Once again, we repeat:
Wonderful job, inept U.S. DOJ, you’ve emboldened an abusive monopolist to run amuck, you clueless wonders.
To paraphrase Scott Turow, the president of the Author’s Guild: The irony of this bites hard: our government has killed real competition in order to save the appearance of competition.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Susan Jackson” for the heads up.]
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