Has anyone actually sat through and watched one of those storyboarded Amazon "movies" on InstantVideo?

Having worked for a manufacturer and had to deal with Amazon, I can say without a doubt that they are bullies- to the point that they dictate pricing and force manufacturers to entirely produce all the product pages on the Amazon website themselves... all while paying for the for the privilege to do so. It's insane.

What's needed is competition.

I work for Amazon on the retail side, and have worked for other national retailers. Amazon is no more a bully than Target, Costco, Wal-Mart etc. They have to improve their economics with suppliers in order to compete in the market. They don't make much margin. Blame it on America's unending desire for cheaper and cheaper goods. AND, as Paul said publishers have to pay for placement just like they would have in Barnes & Noble.

I bought a $79 Kindle in October and since then I've spent between $100 and $200 on ebooks.

I am also an Amazon Prime member at $79.

I understand the Kindle is sold at near cost (I think they lose $2 on each). But it seems to me that just on the media side of the business, unless their operating costs are outrageous, if I'm at all average they should be making a lot of money.

You do too see books on display at B&N that haven't been paid for, because I surreptitiously put them there! Yeah, I know, dick move. I also refile books by Republicans in the wrong place (where any halfway decent clerk should be able to spot them from thirty feet away).

Amazon is the Great Satan. They're bullies just like WalMart is a bully, deliberately underpricing goods to capture markets, and driving local retailers and any other on-line competition out of business. Honest competition is one thing; what Amazon does is not honest competition. They can sit on their own Kindles and spin, as far as I'm concerned.

I wonder when the FTC and the DOJ's Antitrust Division are going to start taking an interest in Amazon's business practices. Alternatively, I wonder how much Amazon stock the top guys at the FTC and the DOJ's Antitrust Division are holding.

On what grounds would anything Amazon is doing be worthy of antitrust oversight?
They are competing.
Or are you suggesting multi-firm collusion between Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Wal-mart, Target, Costco...?

And once more: wah wah boo hoo, paleopublishers. Adapt already!

@9 anti-trust and government has no bearing or direct legal control (today) over someone just legitimately kicking the shit out of everyone else by being better/cheaper/more accessible/successful. That's what Amazon is doing.

In the ole days, children, co-op money was used by bookstores to promote books in print advertising, almost exclusively related to author appearances. I know that at Bailey/Coy Books we never, ever took a thin dime from anyone for placment of a title in the store. I'm betting that the same is true of almost all independents. The placement money came to light as the Big Box booksellers took center stage in the industry.

Course, we're no longer in business. So take from that what you will.

YouTube says they want more content that they can sell to folks.

I think a big fat opportunity just fell into their lap, if they'll bother to notice.

@12, that's true -- the first I ever heard of it was at B&N or Borders. The losers who ran the bookstore I worked at would have jumped at such a scheme, if they'd heard of it, but that was a million years ago (more than a quarter century, amazing).

@10 and @12: Selling the Kindle Fire at a loss in order to lock in customers to Amazon's Kindle Cloud and further Amazon's market dominance in e-book retailing, and then squeezing smaller publishers who wish to participate in that dominant market, might be considered predatory pricing, vertical tying, and attempting to monopolize a part of trade or commerce by unlawful means. (I don't recall that our antitrust laws have any general "abuse of a dominant market position" provision, unlike the EU.) But as the original social reasons underlying US antitrust laws have been replaced by microeconomic analysis in the minds of most judges and enforcement authorities since the Reagan Administration, a lot of antitrust law has seemingly become a dead letter. So yeah, you're probably right.

Barnes & Noble PR machine is lacking. They should have been all over this. About how they support independent publishing and so on. Offer IPG titles prime places on their site and email. This is a great opportunity to differentiate themselves.

Ugh. The problem is that the Kindle has the best, easiest, most simple interface of the eReaders -- I love mine.

Take note, everyone: there are ways to convert Docs, PDFs and HTML files, images and all, into .mobi. They make sure to make it a pain in the ass -- in UNIX you have to get into the command line -- but I've done it with a few different books now, and it's been great. This means you can totally buy books from Powell's or whatever and read them on your device. Plus, it uses up Amazon's Kindle Cloud space for things they didn't gain any revenue on!