CT AG Tong in antitrust probe of Amazon’s e-book operations

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong has been quietly conducting an antitrust investigation of Amazon”™s e-book operations.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, Tong”™s office is examining if the e-commerce giant was involved in anticompetitive behavior through agreements between its e-book platform and five of the nation”™s largest book publishers: HarperCollins Publishers, Hachette Book Group, Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster and Macmillan.

Tong”™s office did not publicly announce the investigation, which has been ongoing since 2019, and the news of the probe became known when the Tech Transparency Project, a nonprofit that investigates technology platforms, obtained Tong”™s 2019 subpoena through an open records request and passed it along to The Wall Street Journal.

In a statement issued yesterday to Reuters, Tong said, “Connecticut has an active and ongoing antitrust investigation into Amazon regarding potentially anticompetitive terms in their e-book distribution agreements with certain publishers.” Tong did not explain why the investigation was not previously made public.

Amazon, which accounts for 76% of all U.S. e-book sales, declined requests to comment on the story, although a spokeswoman for Tong said the company told The Wall Street Journal that the company is cooperating with the investigation.