Comment by aerhardt
7 days ago
But I don’t think Amazon could “pirate” a Penguin edition like that without their consent. Russell’s The Problems of Philosophy is like you say, but they stripped it out of all mentions of a publishing house. I didn’t mind that one in fact
Why do you think Amazon couldn't do that?
Because Penguin Random House is one of the "Big Five" publishers. I can bet the house that Amazon treats it as a key strategic account within their Books department. They have to deal with them face-to-face regularly. It would be grossly negligent to do this without their consent, not to mention illegal.
It's as if Amazon started selling pirated Nintendo games. Someone from Nintendo would be on their arses in very little time. And while I know very little about the publishing industry, I worked as a PM for Nintendo for four years, and can absolutely guarantee that it would go down like that.
Amazon sells 67% of all e-books in the US and 50% of all print books. Amazon isn't trapped with the big 5; the big 5 are trapped with Amazon.