Melville House Books

A group of Scottish booksellers has filed a complaint with the government’s Office of Fair Trading against Amazon for “bullying” them out of business, according to a report by Mike Merritt for The Scotsman.

Many of the shops also sell books through Amazon’s UK version of its Associates program, which, says the report, “represents more than half of their online business and a substantial part of their overall trade” for many of them. “But now the company has told the shops they cannot sell books cheaper anywhere else online, even on their own websites. It has issued an ultimatum saying that unless the stores sign up to a new agreement by Wednesday they risk being delisted.”

“This is nothing but a bullying attempt by Amazon to use its strength on the internet to get an even greater proportion of online business,” one bookseller tells the paper. “It is in my view anti-competitive, is a form of price fixing and ultimately will lead to customers paying higher prices for the same products.”

“Booksellers are already concerned about pricing issues in the current free price environment, and we encourage the OFT to look into this move by Amazon,” says Tim Godfray, head of the Booksellers Association. “We would ask, are we in a free market? Is it permissible for an internet bookseller to control in some way the pricing of another seller’s products? We look forward to an OFT ruling as soon as possible.”

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.