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Because who doesn't love business law?

Lawsuit Accuses Apple and Publishers of Price Fixing to Stunt Kindle’s Growth

by Eric Limer | 10:58 am, August 10th, 2011

Apple, along with book publishers HarperCollins, Hachette, Mcmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster are now involved in a class-action lawsuit that accuses them of colluding to fix prices in order to hurt Amazon’s Kindle success. The lawsuit, being brought by a Seattle law firm, suggests that all the parties involved had reason to be afraid of Amazon’s pro-consumer pricing scheme for both its hardware and for eBooks.

The logic of the case goes something like this: Publishers were concerned about lost profits from the sale of Amazon’s eBooks, Apple was concerned that the Kindle could seriously damage the iPad’s viability as an eBook reader, and therefore, the two teamed up to fix prices to try and thwart Amazon’s eBook endeavors.

While Apple and Publishers could do little-to-nothing about the price of Amazon’s hardware, they could increase the cost of eBooks, buying time for publishers to ease into digital distribution on their own terms instead of Amazon’s and buying time for Apple to release the iPad. The collusion allegedly forced Amazon into new contracts with publishers wherein publishers set the prices and when the prices were illegally raised, the publishers skimmed off some extra profit and slowed the boom of digital literature. Allegedly. GeekWire quotes a class action specialist as saying the following.

As a result of the pricing conspiracy, prices of e-books have exploded, jumping as much as 50 percent. When an e-book version of a best-seller costs close to – or even more than – its hard-copy counterpart, it doesn’t take a forensic economist to see that this is evidence of market manipulation.

Check out the press release and entire suit here.

(via GeekWire)

  • Razo

    http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-America-Narrative-History/dp/B000EXYZK4/ref=pd_sim_b_2

    I was -just- wondering what the heck was up with the kindle price of this book I was looking to buy. 16 bucks huh? When the hardback is 7 bucks new, 11 bucks plus shipping. The paperback even cheaper. Penguin Publishing?!

    SUE! SUE THEEEM!

  • http://twitter.com/wonkydonky wonky donky.

    -If any of this were true, it would PALE in comparison to what Amazon has been doing forever.

    Strong-arming any and ALL publishers into their pricing. 

    Standard Tactic? You take the price We say, or we de-publish the pages for your Entire Catalog, thus shutting off ALL sales on Amazon,

    …Until you see the light and decide to take the Amazon deal.

    Guys like Joe Konrath would know about this type of thing; iirc, his blog is one of the 1st places I read about it. http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/

    It’s so bad, the olden days of the $100k Author’s Advance, have now become the $50k Author’s Advance. 

    So Amazon and their Chicago Politics can go scratch.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_VZCZFQ5UOSG55SSHXUCSNSHEGM Becky

    About time something was done about the ridiculously high ebook prices.


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