[acgourley]

Amazon is creating value by reducing waste and streamlining distribution of goods. They operate in a fair market, and if they ever raise their prices later they'll be undercut by someone else, so they don't have a monopoly which you should fear. They do have some DRM in place with Kindles and such, but I believe you're overblowing this. What are you worried about in particular?

[MaysonL]

I buy a lot of books, mainly used, mainly physical. In most cases, I find that I can get as good or better price vie Abebooks as through Amazon.

Amazon, like Walmart, while it saves money for consumers, takes a lot of that money out of producers' margins. Selling through Amazon is a low-margin business.

[cal5k]

You are aware that Amazon owns Abebooks?

[evoxed]

Since this doesn't seem to be common knowledge (and it isn't easily referenced from abebooks.com alone), they were acquired by Amazon in 2008 along with a minority (40%) stake in LibraryThing. See here: http://techcrunch.com/2008/08/01/amazon-to-acquire-abebooks/

[ekianjo]

Well like any other good company out there, Amazon has not interest to squeeze their producers too much, because they would be killing their own business in the process. The art is to squeeze them just enough so that they feel pressure but still can survive and make money - which is exactly what is happening. Of course, for producers who have not felt any pressure to change for the past xxxx years, ANY pressure feels like extortion. But it's just normal business negotiation like everywhere else. Now their business is catching up as well, that is all.

[acgourley]

a) It's not clearly wrong to reduce producer margins. b) Buying used is the ultimate way to take money out of producers margins!