Amazon’s Tactics Confirm Its Critics’ Worst Suspicions

This week, as part of a contract dispute with the publisher Hachette, we’re seeing Amazon behaving at its worst. The company’s willingness to nakedly flex its anticompetitive muscle gives new cause for concern to anyone who cares about books — authors, publishers, but mainly customers.

Here’s the back story: In an effort to exert pressure on Hachette, Amazon began taking down preorder buttons for many Hachette titles. It has also suddenly raised prices on some Hachette books and has changed its page design to more prominently recommend other titles. These moves follow weeks of increasingly hardball tactics. Among other customer-punishing moves, Amazon has increased shipping times for Hachette titles from a few days to weeks.

via NYTimes.com.