Your response makes absolutely no sense. This is not about the quality of books, but rather distribution channels. Authors have noticed that their sales were being cannibalized by the KU reads. Which translates into less money. And if their a midlist author, like 99.9% are, then this hurts them even more so there's no incentive to allow their works to be put onto KU. Even if Amazon makes it a condition to receiving 70% royalties, which they would be stupid to do, it still would not be an incentive to do it because all you'd be doing is forcing authors to take a smaller pay cut because they did not take a huge pay cut.

Amazon is NOT a monopoly. A monopoly is when one company, or a small group of companies, control the supply of a product/service/etc. in a way that harms the consumer. Amazon does not control any supply and it is not harming the US consumers. First and foremost, in the grand scheme of things Amazon controls only a small segment of retail itself. In 2013 US retail spending was $5.4 Trillion. US E-Commerce sales totaled $263 Billion. So even if Amazon was the sole eCommerce site used by everyone in the US that would still amount to only 5.8% of all US retail.

The true monopolists in the book industry are the publishers. Let's examine the Amazon/Hachette spat in detail a little. Amazon wanted more freedom to price eBooks cheaper and Hachette objected. That's the core of the argument right there. Now let's take a look at some of Amazon's behavior during this spat:

1) They stopped taking pre-orders for Hachette books. Since Amazon no longer had a sales agreement with Hachette, it would seem logical that they would not want to take pre-orders and then be unable to fulfill them since its stock of these titles would be at Hachette's discretion and not at a mutually agreed upon level.

2) Amazon stopped stocking Hachette titles as much. So? Where is it written that a retail store must carry the products of a vendor with whom it has disagreements? Other retailers reported upswings in purchasing of Hachette titles during the negotiations with Amazon (it took 6 months). People were still able to get the titles.

3) They stopped discounting Hachette titles. Discounts has been Amazon's thing, it's why most of us shop there when we don't need the item right away. But let's really examine this one because it is the pièce de résistance. What Hachette was complaining about was that Amazon was selling Hachette's books at the price Hachette set for them. Keep that in mind, because Hachette wanted Amazon to sell eBooks at the price Hachette set. Translation: Hachette wanted Amazon to sell eBooks more expensive than they had to be (something Hachette, five other publishers, and Apple got nailed by the Department of Justice and several State Attorneys General for) in order to subsidize their print sales which is what Hachette is trying so hard to protect because the barriers of entry to the eBook market are substantially lower.

According the the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/28/technology/amazon-offers-all-you-can-eat-books-authors-turn-up-noses.html), authors who make their works available via Kindle Unlimited are experiencing income drops some in excess of 75%. So unless Amazon changes the model, authors' income is threatened and KU is doomed to fail. The exodus has already started and Amazon really has nothing more to entice authors to allow their works to be distributed through it.

If that were possible, Fox "News" would have ceased to exist long ago.

Yeah, because who needs clean air, fresh water, safe food, safe working conditions, fair pay and other such "Big Government" regulations?

Free speech guarantees you the right to say it free from consequences. It says nothing about a guaranteed venue or audience. And any college would have a legitimate interest in blocking that material over their e-mail system on a mass scale. It's happened before:

"An estimated 3000 [Michigan State University] students protesting the ban on alcohol at Munn Field tailgate parties resulted in police firing tear gas at the crowd. The gathering was planned in advance by an email spread through the student body email system asking students to gather and protest the ban. The university police informed students, via the school newspaper, that anyone getting on Munn Field would be arrested for trespassing. One student crossed the fence and was arrested by campus police. Shortly thereafter, 30-40 students crossed the fence and when the remaining students saw the police unable to arrest everyone, approximately 1,500 students poured over the fence on Munn field. The students played football, frisbee and played in the rain and mud. The police then tear gassed the students, who then left and went to the University President's (M. Peter McPherson) house. When the students learned the President was not available, they then went to Grand River Ave, and a small riot ensued."

And don't pull the "only conservatives are restricted" card because it is easily annihilated.

They're big business because there is no incentive to use anything else.

True considering we practice selective capitalism in this country.

How about banning the pesticide that's killing them off?

True. But Amazon cannot blackmail the publisher using its marketing clout either. It would be like Microsoft making it so Windows will not run a certain company's software.

You're comparing Apples and Crocodiles. Apple rigged prices with the collusion of the major publishers which is illegal.

No, it does not count. Itanium's target market changed and they did not switch to AMD. If you want to use the "kicked the ass of" phrasing, Itanium got its ass kicked by Xeon\ because that is what the high-end servers, like the ones SGi produces now, are using that require strong number crunching if they are still using chips in the Intel/AMD ecosystem.

How could AMD64 "kick IA64's ass" when they were never in competition with each other? IA64 refers to Itanium which was never released for consumer markets but rather for high-end servers. It was to compete against Sun's SPARC, DEC's Alpha, and the SGi MIPS chips.

Amen! I finally had a chance to listen to music using Beats. To be fair I gave it a minute or two of listening and came to the conclusion the Sennheiser headphones I bought from Best Buy were much better and 75% cheaper.

And I would say a reaction formation is your problem.