Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against Amazon For Blocking Out Other Print On Demand Providers

from the had-to-see-that-coming dept

Back in March, we wrote about Amazon's surprise decision to only sell print-on-demand books that were serviced through Amazon's own print-on-demand system. This upset an awful lot of book authors who used alternatives and felt that Amazon was blocking them out and forcing them to use a solution they didn't like very much. Amazon tried to quell the anger by explaining the reasoning and saying that authors could still use other POD solutions if they supplied Amazon with an inventory of five books (which sort of defeats the purpose of POD). So, it should come as little surprise that a class action lawsuit has been filed against Amazon, claiming that it's violating anti-trust laws in blocking out other POD suppliers. It may be difficult to prove an actual anti-trust violation -- but no matter what the result, it's rather surprising that Amazon would do this, as the company had to know it would piss off a lot of authors who have been huge supporters of the site for many years. It's hard to see how the trouble of having to fulfill from other POD providers could really be worth that much anger and ill-will.

Filed Under: anti-trust, book sales, print on demand
Companies: amazon