Authors big and small, publishers, lawyers and regulators gathered in Washington Wednesday to discuss the growing influence and monopoly power in the book publishing and selling market wielded by Amazon, described by those in attendance as “the Darth Vader of the literary world,” that if left unchecked by antitrust regulators, will spark “a nuclear winter in book publishing.”

Amazon, by a wide margin the largest book retailer in the U.S., currently has as large a market share in the entire book business as John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil — the largest vertically integrated oil refiner of it’s time — had in 1911 before the Supreme Court ruled it an illegal monopoly, breaking it up into 34 companies, according to economist Paul Krugman.

The U.S.’s biggest online retailer controls 75 percent of online sales of physical books, 65 percent of e-book sales, more than 40 percent of new book sales and 85 percent of e-book sales by self-published authors, founder of Authors United, author and journalist Doug Preston said at New America’s “Amazon’s Book Monopoly: A Threat to Freedom of Expression?” event Wednesday
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