With Amazon playing the game of undercutting the entire market until everyone else is dead, the only way to win is not to play.
Every single purchase from Amazon — book or otherwise — is a vote for Bezos' monopoly over your culture.
Every single purchase from Amazon — book or otherwise — is a vote for Bezos' monopoly over your culture.
This is not publishers shutting out Amazon, this is publishers shutting out digital books, and they have been doing so all along, consistently pricing ebooks at the same or higher price of print copies and colluding with Apple in a price fixing scheme.
But some people who don't get how markets work think prices are: how_much_work_I_did+how_much_materials_cost+profit_amount_I_want. It's not. The item is priced based on the value it is perceived to provide.
Things are priced by the buyer according to perceived value also, but using a different equation. a sale occur when the two points close enough that either or both parties are willing to adjust their price point to make the sale.
The seller "prices" the goods at marginal cost + profit. The buyer decides if there is enough values at that price for her to make the purchase.
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.