From a New York Times story by Shira Ovide headlined “The Books Merger That’s About Amazon”:

Amazon isn’t on trial in a big books lawsuit. But its power is.

The U.S. government is suing to stop the book publisher Penguin Random House from buying a competitor, Simon & Schuster. The government says that the merger, which will shrink the number of large American publishers of mass-market books from five to four, will hurt some authors by reducing competition for their books.

A trial in the government’s lawsuit started this week, and my colleagues wrote a helpful explanation of the legal issues and what’s at stake for the companies involved, writers and book lovers.