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Judge Approves Settlement In eBook Price-Fixing Case
An anonymous reader writes "On Thursday a U.S. District Judge approved a settlement between the Department of Justice and three publishers accused to colluding to inflate ebook prices (order). 'The Justice Department had accused Apple and five publishers in April of illegally colluding on prices as part of an effort to fight internet retailer Amazon.com Inc's dominance of e-books. The publishers who agreed to settle are News Corp's HarperCollins Publishers Inc, CBS Corp's Simon & Schuster Inc and Lagardere SCA's Hachette Book Group. Apple; Macmillan, a unit of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH; and Pearson Plc's Penguin Group have vowed to fight the Justice Department's lawsuit with a trial due to start on June 3 next year.' The decision came after a lengthy period of public comment. According to the AP, 'The ruling released Thursday cast aside the strident objections of Apple, other book publishers, book sellers and authors who argued the settlement will empower Internet retailing giant Amazon.com Inc. to destroy the "literary ecosystem" with rampant discounting that most competitors can't afford to match. Those worries were repeatedly raised in court filings about the settlement. More than 90 percent of the 868 public comments about the settlement opposed the agreement.'"
I, for one, hope this results in lower eBook prices.
I have a Kindle (and Nook tablet) that are underutilized because I refuse to pay more for an eBook than I do to have a paper book delivered to my house. About the only eBooks I read are from Smashwords or Baen. Almost every book I've bought from Amazon has been a used paper book because they are typically about half the price of an eBook.
After 2 years with the Kindle, I've bought exactly 3 Amazon eBooks - all purchased before traveling since I didn't want to carry around heavy paper books. I've never gotten around to reselling my used books (which would net me another dollar or two of savings), so my local thrift shop has been getting them.
I work for a publishing company and ... this is going to blow your mind ... a significant majority of our authors wouldn't want to have to be responsible for editing, promoting, designing, and selling their product. They also tend to really like that we give them money in advance before they even have a finished manuscript. Their book could sell zero copies but they at least got several grand out of the deal; it's a comforting thought when putting in months of effort.
Are there examples of authors out there who do like to take the hands on approach and can it work out for them? Sure. I seriously doubt however that our 60+ year old Amish fiction author wants to try and figure out why InDesign hyphenates across a page break despite being told not to when you add a hyperlink text destination for the table of content.