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Apple Fires Back At DoJ Over eBook Price Fixing

Posted by Soulskill on from the best-defense-is-a-good-offense dept.

An anonymous reader writes "CNN takes a look at Apple's response to the Department of Justice's investigation into eBook price fixing. The filing 'cuts the government's case to shreds' while at the same time not bothering to defend the five publishers also under investigation. Apple said, 'The Government starts from the false premise (PDF) that an eBooks "market" was characterized by "robust price competition" prior to Apple's entry. This ignores a simple and incontrovertible fact: before 2010, there was no real competition, there was only Amazon. At the time Apple entered the market, Amazon sold nearly nine out of every ten eBooks, and its power over price and product selection was nearly absolute.'"

3 of 311 comments (clear)

  1. I only download free books by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Support the Gutenberg Project. Don't pay for your ebooks. Download them for free from http://www.gutenberg.org/

  2. A lot of words by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    That's a lot of words that don't change the fact that virtually every eBook you could ever want to buy costs more now than it did before Apple entered the market, which is the actual problem that the DOJ case intended to address.

    1. Re:A lot of words by Telvin_3d · · Score: 2, Informative

      You still have to make the money back on editors, artwork, advertisement, etc., but the physical print, transportation, and storage costs should cause those books to be discounted a good amount.

      How much do you think it costs to print a book? Let's look at it this way. You can go out and buy a laser printer that will do 5c/page for double sided text. Each double sided paper equals four pages in a hard cover book. 400 pages in a typical book, or printing costs of about $5. Done at home on consumer equipment. Yes, you still need binding and shipping and such but I have to figure that a professional print house can do the actual printing for cheaper than I can do it at my computer desk so it would all balance out.

      So the total cost savings for a publisher by going digital is likely more than $5 but certainly less than $10. And most digital copies tend to be about $5-$10 cheaper than the hardcover. Yes, there are exceptions but on the whole I'd say it tracks pretty well.