Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Amazon

[Commentary] Think of the Standard Oil-style abominations booksellers would perpetrate if the Justice Department's trust busters weren't on the watch. Literacy itself might be at risk. But though DoJ claimed the scalps of five major publishers and convicted Apple of price fixing, the book business still seems beset by a problem or two. There was nothing in those cases remotely approaching the exertions of market power that Amazon is now leveraging in its pricing feud with the publisher Hachette. Could it be that the feds targeted the wrong monopolist? Authors, editors and the book industry feel hostage to Amazon, but readers who want to buy Hachette books should be asking why the Justice Department's earlier intervention resulted in a de facto endorsement of Amazon's power plays.