Protests against Amazon: The bad boy and the good spirits – Tagesspiegel

17:25 clock Corinna Visser and Gregor Dotzauer

The Internet retailer Amazon is on the way to quasi-monopolist. Following the example of the United States is forming now at German authors of the resistance – on many channels.

A few days ago have protested over 900 American writer to Amazon. Led by Douglas Preston, they expressed last Sunday in a full-page ad in the “New York Times” their displeasure with the practices of the Internet merchant. It was the largest public outcry that the conflict was heard to date. Preston, became famous thrillers, Amazon throws before, artificially bring about delays by books, the publishers do not grant the desired Discounts on e-books.

Those affected also include Prestons U.S. publisher Hachette. Authors such as Stephen King, Donna Tartt and John Grisham have signed the protest.

Now German authors Amazon have been targeted. Should be in a letter to CEO Jeff Bezos and his German governor Ralf Kleber, the next week posted on the website www.autoren-for-fair-buchmarkt.de, many writers call for resistance. In the letter, present the Tagesspiegel, says: “We authors are of the opinion that no book seller hinder or even customers should discourage the purchase of books selling books.” In Germany there is above all the Swedish publisher Bonnier Group belong to the Ullstein, Piper or the Berlin publishing house, in a clinch with Amazon -. likewise because of unacceptable high discounts

“In recent months,” according to the lawsuit, “Bonnier authors are boycotted and their books are not kept in stock, even if they are common works. “would” delivered slowed over the deliverability there are false statements, and the authors no longer appear in the recommendation lists. “Der by the German PEN and its General Secretary regulators Venske, the Association of German Writers (VS), the IG authors Austria and the Federal Association of young authors initiated letter concludes: “. Amazon manipulated recommendation lists”

Even the Central Directory of Antiquarian books already belongs to Amazon

The protest follows an antitrust complaint filed the Association of German Book Trade in July. The EU-Commission of the tax reasons domiciled in Luxembourg company should have now taken preliminary investigations. Since one and a half years, Amazon faced with strikes at several of its nine distribution centers. The Verdi union seeks to enforce a collective bargaining agreement, the profit of the retail and mail order. With an hourly wage of 9.55 euros initially Amazon pays its approximately 15,000 employees around one euro less. However, the company does not want a collective agreement, arguing that the work is in the logistics distribution centers. Measured by pay Amazon well

In 2004, the Zurich Diogenes Verlag fought against unreasonable Discounts -., And was delisted with his titles for a while. But that was at a time when Amazon had not yet developed into the world’s largest online department store that primarily cares for his book business, to stay with a wealthy clientele in contact. Who reads books, will also buy beauty and personal hygiene items, consumer electronics, CDs and clothing. Amazon is also grown into a multi-media company, which itself occurs verlegerisch and trying to control the entire value chain. Amazon even dominates the market for antiquarian books. It reached this position over the acquirer 2008 online retailers Abebooks, of the Central Directory of Antiquarian Books (ChooseBooks) acquired in 2001.

In addition, Amazon operates a film distribution both on DVD and as a stream, and is today at all a marketplace, the use of other traders. It’s Jeff Bezos has managed to make all processes highly efficient around e-commerce. Amazon is a perfectly organized logistics provider and manages one of the largest providers of cloud services large amounts of data. In this case, other companies use the data centers and programs. Countless Berlin start-ups would be unthinkable without Amazon.