The Future of Book Publishing

Here’s an interesting essay about why book publishers will give up on Digital Rights Management: because they are more afraid of Amazon becoming a monopsony than they are of consumer piracy. I don’t know if the author will turn out to be correct, but it’s an interesting discussion of the immediate future of book publishing, and the way the Kindle has changed the marketplace.

[A monopsony is a market condition where multiple sellers, (the majority of sellers in that market) all have to sell to the same individual buyer because that buyer is buying a significant portion of the entire market. This gives the buyer the advantage because the buyer can keep asking each seller to match or undercut the competing sellers prices, thus driving down the prices of the products in that market. As the only or majority purchaser of a good or service, the “monopsonist” may dictate terms to its suppliers in the same manner that a monopolist controls the market for its buyers.]