Comment by frandroid

You kiiiiiiind of forgot the central issue of the story: Amazon trying to tell publishers how much they can sell their books for. Amazon could continue offering "retail management services" to these sellers, at a fixed percentage cut, like it does to sellers of countless other goods where it does not try to fix prices. Amazon and the publishers had a perfectly good agreement before, and Amazon decided to play hardball upon renewal, punishing readers and authors. That's unprecedented in the book business, and it is incumbent on Amazon to justify this. The only reason Amazon can pull this off is that they control half the retail book market, so it becomes an anti-trust issue.