The Justice Department finally took aim at the monopolistic monolith that threatened to dominate the book industry. So imagine the shock when the bullet aimed at threats to competition went whizzing by Amazon — which not long ago had a 90 percent stranglehold on e-books — and instead, struck five of the six biggest publishers and Apple, a minor player in the realm of books.
In the short term, stopping the agency model that threatened Amazon’s ability to completely own the market will result in lower ebook prices from Amazon. They can sell most of them at a loss until they do own the market. Then what?