Amazon and Its Missing Books

Plunging sales by Hachette writers on Amazon indicate that the retailer’s tactics have discouraged potential customers.

A delay in shipping may not be censorship. But what if the book is hard or even impossible to find on Amazon, which sells nearly half the books in America? Publishers other than Hachette also have issues with how Amazon sells their books. When a reader goes looking for one title, sometimes it is simply straightforward marketing to try to offer him or her another book. “People who liked this, also liked that” is a standard gimmick, on Amazon and everywhere else in the bookselling world. But what if the reader, looking for one author, is then offered novels by other writers in the same genre that are free? Does that qualify as an unfair thumb on the scale?