Steve Weinberg has been a journalist, professor, author (10 books) and prolific book reviewer in a 50-year career.But now, no longer in the classroom or at work on books, he likes nothing more than visiting his grandchildren — and strolling into the three bookstores in his home town of Columbia, Missouri, a university town.
In one used book store — two miles from his home — he can find gems tucked on the shelves.Another is a rare independent bookseller of new books that opened just before the pandemic, but has survived —and thrived, a rarity today. And the third is what Weinberg describes as “a very good” Barnes and Noble, a chain store.
Weinberg, a reader since childhood, grew up in a house where his mother made sure there were lots of books., where teachers encouraged reading, and where he was “able to get on his bike and ride to the public library.”
“Of course, I use libraries,” he told me. “But I always like to buy books. I don’t spend much money on other things.”He quickly added: “I don’t ever buy books from Amazon. I want to support brick and mortar bookstores.”But Weinberg may be part of a dying breed.
A congressional investigation of Big Tech monopolies found that Amazon has “market power over the entire book industry,” including sales, distribution and publishing. In the United States, Amazon’s annual sale of 300 million books accounts for over half of all print and 80 per cent of e-book sales.
When I look for a book — new or used — I go to Amazon. Two days later I am reading the book in my bed.In fact, 60% of online searches start with Amazon, the most-visited website in the world for shopping, controlling about 70% of all U.S. online sales with $316 billion sales in 2022. Amazon only earns $28 billion a yearfrom books. But it has what Nation magazine calls a “death grip” on the book industry.
“Amazon is the dominant online marketplace,” the 2020 Congressional report declared.So why, exactly, should we be concerned? Big is not necessarily bad. Here’s the thing.
Will trustbusting impact our First Amendment rights?
The First Amendment was established so citizens could hear from a “multitude of tongues,” as the Supreme Court once said.We wanted all voices to be heard so you would hear competing sides and decide for yourself. And, so, we made sure the government couldn’t decide who gets to talk in this marketplace of ideas.
But now it’s not the government interfering with our right to hear. It’s now the power of what is increasingly known as Big Tech — Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. Household names, companies that take up a big portion of our lives and pocketbooks.And that’s why the federal government is tangled up in anti-trust lawsuits against all four of them.
Joe Biden is trustbusting, aggressively.
“Hunting season for large technology companies is in full swing,” write two authors in the Harvard Business Review.
Biden is not likely to win quickly — or at all — but the strategy is to force the monopolists into corners and begin to change their behaviors — their persistent invasion of privacy; their setting algorhthms that lure children; their fiddling with search engines in ways we don’t understand; their iron clamp on the phone market. Some reforms have started. But Big Tech also has big money and an array of lawyers to fight back, for years if necessary.
Opinion:Columbia's encampments and the clashes at UCLA prove it: Civil debate needs protection
It's a old American story
By the way, this is an old American story. Weinberg would know. He wrote a book about journalist Ida Tarbell who in 1903 exposed archetype capitalist John D. Rockefeller for his oil company monopoly. Eventually the trust-busting Theodore Roosevelt broke up Standard Oil.In 1984 AT&T, known as Ma Bell, was broken up by the government to unleash telephone competition. And then in 2003 Microsoft bowed to a settlement to help control its monopoly appetite.
Now, new kids have taken over the block. As the Congressional report puts it, “Companies that once were scrappy, underdog startups that challenged the status quo have become the kinds of monopolies we last saw in the era of oil barons. Although these firms have delivered clear benefits, their dominance has come at a price.”
Because of Big Tech, the report asserts, there “is less innovation, fewer choices for consumers, and a weakened democracy.” I would add a chilling note:They threaten freedom of speech and could make the 45 words of the First Amendment laughable. When one person and company — Jeff Bezos and Amazon — can control which books see the light of day, that’s an authoritarian threat to democracy.
Don’t get me wrong: I love Amazon books and I’ve seen no credible evidence — yet — that Bezos and Co. go after authors or publishers because he disagrees with their politics.But the threat looms. And I don’t believe Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club is enough to challenge it.
Bezos, undoubtedly, is a genius entrepreneur. He started Amazon as a little online bookstore. He invested and grew the business. He waited 10 years to make a profit, and then the big profits rolled in. (To his credit, he also bought and revived The Washington Post in the process.) But the Federal Trade Commission lawsuit says Amazon violates the law “not because it is big, but because it engages in a course of exclusionary conduct,” preventing new competitors from emerging. Amazon “ensures that no current or future rival can threaten its dominance.”
And that is why the Big Five publishing houses quake in its wake.
“Amazon has proven time and again that it won’t hesitate to retaliate against publishers that step out of line,” argues the left-leaning Nation magazine. And while reflexive support for regulating big companies is not a surefire solution, putting the screws to out-of-control Big Tech by enforcing existing law and expanding it when possible makes sense.
If Amazon, by the way, wants to disallow certain authors from selling books on its website, that’s their right under free speech. Government can’t tell private people or corporations what they can say. But the government can and should go after ownership concentrations when they violate anti-trust laws. Amazon has consistently bought up competitors and the government has not lifted a finger to stop it.
Getting back to Weinberg. He sees his local bookstore as a “gathering place for the like-minded” and he fears “the loss of local community.” I just want to make sure that the books he wants to buy in his town are not controlled by a media monopoly.
“Trustbusters can and should set their sights on protecting book publishers and authors as essential curators and producers of ideas and expression,” conclude two Harvard Business Review authors. I agree.
Rob Miraldi’s First Amendment writing has won numerous awards.He taught journalism at the State University of New York for many years. email: rob.miraldi@gmail.com
