US Justice Department threatens Apple and publishers with court battle The US Justice Department has warned Apple and five big publishing houses that they may be seeing the inside of a courtroom for allegedly inflating the prices of ebooks if they can't settle the issue between themselves. People familiar with the matter went whispering to the Wall Street Journal saying that some of the parties …
I mean BEFORE Apple came along...
"When Amazon first came on the scene, it was selling new books at a tiny profit margin over the publisher's price or even at a loss to get folks interested in its Kindle readers – which the publishers weren't happy about at all.
Then Apple..."
This implies the publishers were not happy with Amazon prior to any Apple agreement - so my original question still holds.
I don't think that answers the question.
If the publishers were happy with the way Amazon was doing things then they would have told Apple to take a walk or accept their terms. Apple didn't even have a book platform so publishers would lose nothing.
I'd say that publishers did have something to gain from the new scheme.
That would be the policy that doesn't exist, would it?
They planned on introducing that policy for subscriptions only last year, but then dumped it about four months later when it became clear that publishers were just going to remove their wares from the store.
Maybe instead of being prescient you should just read the news.
Amazon was trying to force new ebooks to be around $10. It was working until Apple stepped in and went to the publishers, now do this as you can gouge more.
Nice work all are dodgy and the Author is the one getting screwed the most with less royalties. Apple wanting 30% is a joke for starters.
Preventing competitors from competing on price: Check
Causing overall prices to go up: Check
O, and what IS the cost of an ebook anyway? User is basically fronting 80% of the cost of "printing" the book, so that part is pretty much elliminated. Distribution cost is, per book, pretty much nill. Still leaves editing and paying the author, but that should still leave them at least marginally cheaper then regular books.
I see little reason for them to cost the same as a regular book, unless the autor is getting a bigger cut. Somehow, I doubt it.
actually according to a write up on baen the phyisical part takes less then the other work (proof reading, etc...).
Pardon me if I take the word of author working for a publisher that quite happy punts DRM free ebooks and also give some books away for free with the authors agreement over some numbnuts posting anonymously on a comments thread.
The write ups on teh baen free libary are pretty intresting TBH.
Definite collusion on industry price fixing by Apple. Apple does not like competition because they can't rake in their exorbitant profit with it. Same thing with the App Store for smartphone/tablet applications - Apple charges a huge 30% fee to the app makers for each sale.
Let the United States and others remain free to have price competition.
Let the United States and others remain free to innovate - another Apple problem is that they have the big bucks to race to patent every obvious, prior-art, or overly general idea and then use the patents to try and block competeting products. It ties up competitors in court temporarily (at least in the courts that immediately side with a patent holder and make the non-holder prove Apple is wrong).
Overall, Apple should be the target of the largest anti-trust lawsuits in history.
I guess you need some basic education on the subject.
Price fixing: Establishing the price of a product or service, rather than allowing it to be determined naturally through free-market forces.
Apple insisted that publishers not allow their books to be sold by other sellers at a price lower than what Apple sells the e-book for on their e-store. It was signed into contract. Apple established a price point at their retail selling level forcing any other publisher agreements to not allow others to sell at lower prices based on free-market forces.
> Apple is in the firing line along with the publishing houses Simon &
> Schuster, Hachette Book Group, Penguin Group, Macmillan and Harper
> Collins, none of whom felt like chatting to the WSJ.
The "firing line" is the place where the people holding the guns and
doing the shooting stand. I think the author meant the Apple was in
the "line of fire", which refers the paths followed by the bullets.
Being in the firing line is a _good_ thing (compared to being in the
line of fire).
[Where do I queue to pick up my pedant points?]
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