The Problem With Amazon

UPDATE: When I first posted this article, Amazon had just announced their first-ever $100 Billion quarter. Fast forward three months, and they’ve blown away those numbers with their latest results: a 44% increase in revenue compared with the same quarter last year, and double the profits - up to $8.9 billion. Amazon now has more than 200 million Prime members worldwide, and business activities that span the globe and touch just about every American, whether or not you ever shop at Amazon.com. Making everything I shared with readers back in January even more acutely pressing today. As Mark Steyn says: don’t say you weren’t warned.

Jeff Bezos' announcement this week that he will be handing over the reins as CEO of Amazon in just a few months may have been the only headline big enough to displace the other Amazon news: that it had achieved $100 billion in quarterly sales for the first time ever. During their record-breaking fourth quarter, Amazon says it delivered more than a billion products to customers worldwide.

Indeed, with unreliable shipping from other sources, overnight delivery from Amazon, and a pandemic keeping everyone at home, Amazon is a shoppers' paradise. And a potential nightmare for conservatives.

Like most publishers, I have a love-hate relationship with Amazon. When it comes to promoting our books, getting data on our customers, ensuring an uninterrupted supply chain, and seizing on immediate market opportunities, Amazon drives us publishers crazy.

I fancy myself a savvy and experienced direct marketer, so Amazon should be my ideal partner, but Amazon wants none of my input or insight on my customers or my market.

Dear Mr. Bezos: Can I tell you which of your customers would be ideal for our new book? No. Can I share with you a very effective email message we sent our customers so you can use it in your email marketing? No. Can I tell you which authors are most similar to this new author, so you can better target your messaging? No. Can you tell me if you are going to send out an email regarding my book? No. If you do send one, can you let me know? No. I discovered you did send one, can you tell me the results? No. Will you accept any help or input from me whatsoever in making your marketing of my book more effective, based on my 20 years experience selling to this market? No and No.

It's enough to make a publisher want to boycott the whole platform. But of course we can't. At least, not yet.

Because billions of consumers LOVE shopping on Amazon, use Amazon as their first choice for researching books and titles and authors, buy all their books from Amazon, have Prime accounts so they get their books within a day or two of ordering, and don't bother going to bookstores anymore because they won't have what you're looking for anyway. Billions of consumers including, I have to admit, me.

All this, however, pales in comparison to the new concerns I have over the potential nexus between a virtual monopoly on book retail and the growing cancel culture in big tech. What was once "merely" a threat to business could soon and very easily become a threat to free speech and liberty.

You've no doubt heard that my colleagues at Regnery recently signed Sen. Josh Hawley's book, which had been canceled by Simon & Schuster. Regnery has a proud, 75-year history of publishing conservative authors and viewpoints that otherwise might not see the light of day. Nearly 20 years ago, soon after I took over as President and Publisher at Regnery, New York seemed to "discover" that conservatives actually read books, and they launched several new imprints to compete directly with Regnery for authors and readers. That chapter seems to be coming to a close, as the woke mob demands that these same publishers shut down those imprints and avoid all authors who don't march to their approved drummer.

This, of course, can spell opportunity for independent publishers like Regnery, who are not afraid to challenge the status quo, and refuse to be intimidated by an angry (not to mention intolerant and hypocritical) mob. But publishing a book, as we know, is just the first step. Will printers be bullied into refusing to print certain books? Will truckers be bullied into refusing to transport certain books? Will credit card companies refuse to process purchases of certain books?

And will Amazon use its enormous, nearly overwhelming power to "deplatform" books with a conservative message?

We already have some evidence that Amazon, like all other major tech platforms, manipulate search results and visibility to promote certain messages - and to ghost others - based on a Left-leaning political bias. But Amazon is still the retail giant of all giants, where a shopper can indeed buy anything and everything they want.

For now.

That $100 billion in sales may be a bulwark against intimidation, making it less likely that the witchhunters can force Amazon into merchandising decisions. But who knows what the "conscience" of Jeff Bezos or his desire to curry favor politically will lead to?

For all independent publishers and authors dedicated to free speech, it is time to make plans for vertical integration that can protect us from future blacklisting and deplatforming. We have seen big tech's attempts to roadblock new platforms, like Parler. Take heed: if Parler depends on the Google and iTunes app stores to reach new customers, they're doomed. Similarly, if publishers and authors are wholly dependent on printers, shippers, distributors, financiers, wholesalers and retailers who will bow to the cancel culture, we are vulnerable to extinction. It is time to build alliances and prepare our move from defense to offense.