Posted on 07/11/2013 5:32:57 AM PDT by dangerdoc
Following a non-jury trial that ended on June 20th, US District Judge Denise Cote has ruled that Apple conspired to raise the retail prices of e-books, according to a Reuters report published this morning. Apple has been at the focus of the Manhattan-based antitrust trial, which began last month, with publishers Macmillan and Penguin Group named as co-defendants. The violation here centered on Apple's agency pricing model, in which publishers set the price of each book and give sellers a 30 percent cut, rather than a traditional wholesale model in which retailers set the pricing at their own stores. Eddy Cue, Apple's SVP of Internet Software and Services, who was tagged as the "chief ringleader of the conspiracy" by the DOJ, went on the record earlier this year to say that some prices were inflated since the launch of the iBookstore in April of 2010 -- a statement which likely didn't help Cupertino's case. A trial for damages will reportedly follow soon.
I wondered why ebooks were essentially just as expensive as the hardback version at the store despite the fact there is pretty much no marginal cost of production. I figured something like this was going on.
I noticed a sudden price increase in ebooks.
What? Apple guilty of corporate greed? It’s not possible only evil Microsoft could be guilty of such!
I’m not seeing the problem from a pure capitalism point of view. If they want to jack up the prices on the latest fad, so be it.
I tend to just buy much older books and classics because you can usually get those for a buck. I would definitely buy more ebooks if the price was more in the $6-7 dollar range instead of $12-$20 range which most current books fall into.
It’s a fad like digital photography is a fad.
In Great Briton, ebooks are now outselling analog, it is trending the same here.
Before Apple made their deal, Amazon frequently had new books for $9.99.
I’m hoping to see that return.
Bookmark
You can jack up your own prices all you want, what is illegal is getting together with your partners and competitors and devising a scheme to force the market price to go up. That is why OPEC and De Beers would both be illegal here in the US.
If you like classics, check out Project Gutenberg, tens of thousands of public domain digital books for free.
If you like SciFi, Baen books has dozens of books of varying age for free also, I think they also sell their market books in your price range also but I haven’t been on their site for a couple of years.
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