Un-Public Library

     If you enjoy borrowing e-books from the library, you'd best hope that all your favorite authors don't pick Amazon as their publisher. 

     Before the Bezos behemoth grew to be a dominant player in e-commerce generally, it upended the book business. These days, Amazon not only sells a ton of books, it remains the preeminent seller of e-books and audiobooks and e-readers -- and it serves as a publisher. That means the company owns the product, the marketplace, and the distribution network. It doesn't have to play nice. 

     These days, that means that books and audiobooks issued by Amazon's publishing division are not made available to libraries at all. If you want digital versions of new titles from the likes of Dean Koontz, Mindy Kaling, or Michael Pollan, you gotta pay Bezos. 

Never seen it? Now you know why.

    Amazon has long frustrated libraries. It resisted for years the idea of letting libraries lend e-books on Kindles -- i.e. the only e-reader most people can name. Amazon's market power has helped to keep libraries from moving fully into the 21st century, according to the American Library Association.  

     All this becomes more urgent as the pandemic ravages independent bookstores and pushes ever more book enthusiasts toward Amazon's digital troves. As anti-monopolist Stacy Mitchell has written, Amazon doesn't just want to dominate the market -- it wants to be the market. 

     Bills under consideration in a few state legislatures (like New York's) would require publishers "to offer licenses for electronic books to libraries under reasonable terms." The power of the state may be required to force such a capitalist giant to parley with institutions that offer their services free to all.