Harry Potter Hits the E-Book Market

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 29, 2012 at 05:42 PM

I've never understood quite why, in a digital age that allows companies to sell directly to their customers, that book... More

The Morning Call Revisits Amazon’s Work Conditions

Allentown workers baked in the summer, froze in the winter

By Ryan Chittum   Nov 11, 2011 at 03:48 PM

Remember that Morning Call investigation a couple of months ago into an Amazon sweatshop outside Allentown, Pennsylvania? The paper showed... More

The Morning Call’s Amazon Sweatshop Probe

An excellent investigation exposes poor conditions at a big Pennsylvania warehouse

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 23, 2011 at 07:52 PM

What's going on with labor in Pennsylvania? It was just last month that foreign students working at Hershey's for the... More

The Seattle Times Takes On Hometown Amazon

A tough series on the dark side of the booming local company

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 10, 2012 at 11:37 AM

Here in Seattle, Amazon is growing like crazy, adding thousands of jobs and building several skyscrapers just off downtown, something... More

WSJ Fronts Amazon’s Tax Avoidance Strategy

Color-coded maps tell employees which states are safe, bad, and neutral

By Ryan Chittum   Aug 3, 2011 at 06:38 PM

It's nice to see The Wall Street Journal take a page-one look at Amazon's aggressive tax avoidance, something I've written... More

Adventures With E-books, Kindle Single Edition

By Felix Salmon   Sep 14, 2011 at 10:28 AM

Ryan Avent’s 90-page Kindle single, The Gated City, is a bargain at $1.99. It was produced in close consultation with... More

Amazon Bolts Texas’s “Unfavorable Regulatory Environment”

But there’s more to the story than we get from the AP and The Dallas Morning News

By Ryan Chittum   Feb 11, 2011 at 02:07 PM

The Associated Press report that Amazon is closing its Texas warehouse due to—and this is a direct Amazon quote—the state's... More

Amazon’s California Tax Battle

Fighting to delay the end of its unfair advantage

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 6, 2011 at 02:37 PM

While billionaire Jeff Bezos is off crashing spaceships (or wannabe spaceships, anyway) in the West Texas desert, his company's unfair... More

Audit Notes: Carr on Amazon, Muni Broadband, Too Big to Fail

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 16, 2012 at 07:49 PM

David Carr's New York Times column today on Amazon, Apple, and the book publishers is excellent. He calls the Department... More

Audit Notes: Ebooks, Amazon, and Apple Edition

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 13, 2012 at 08:05 PM

Barry C. Lynn, author of Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction, writes a good Slate piece... More

Audit Notes: Lehman’s Green Monster, Sands Storm, Amazon Taxes

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 11, 2011 at 07:55 PM

Bloomberg's Christine Harper Richard and Bob Ivry circle back to the Fenway deal Lehman Brothers made with Hudson Castle that... More

Audit Notes: Levin-Coburn Referrals; Falling Dollar, Rising Exports; Amazon Watch

By Ryan Chittum   May 3, 2011 at 08:12 PM

Bloomberg reports that Senators Carl Levin and Tom Coburn have formally referred their bipartisan investigation of the financial crisis, and... More

Ebooks and Antitrust

The Justice Department sues Apple and five book publishers for fighting Amazon

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 11, 2012 at 07:56 PM

Back in 2010, a giant retailer had 90 percent of a market—a near total monopoly (monopsony, if you want to... More

Slate Takes on Amazon’s Unfair Advantage

The retailer manipulates nexus law to give customers tax breaks competitors can’t offer

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 8, 2010 at 02:01 AM

Slate's Farhad Manjoo wrote last month about how online retailers like Amazon get a huge unfair advantage over their bricks... More