By Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Amazon is already facing a potential lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission, and now, a group of authors, booksellers, and an antitrust think tank is calling on the agency to investigate the e-commerce giant’s stranglehold on the bookselling market, as previously reported by The New York Times.
In the letter, the Authors Guild, American Booksellers Association, and Open Markets Institute urge the FTC to look into Amazon’s “monopoly in its role as a seller of books to the public.” The three organizations accuse Amazon of dominating “almost every aspect of the book market,” citing data that the company sells over 50 percent of all physical books in the retail market, 90 percent of physical books sold online, and over 80 percent of all…