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Judge Thinks Apple Will Lose E-Book Price-Fixing Case
Nerval's Lobster writes "Apple could face a difficult time winning its court case against the U.S. Department of Justice over e-book pricing, according to the federal judge overseeing the trial. 'I believe that the government will be able to show at trial direct evidence that Apple knowingly participated in and facilitated a conspiracy to raise prices of e-books,' U.S. District Judge Denise Cote said during a May 23 pretrial hearing, according to Reuters, 'and that the circumstantial evidence in this case, including the terms of the agreements, will confirm that.' Apple's legal counsel is a bit perturbed over her comments. 'We strongly disagree with the court's preliminary statements about the case today,' Apple lawyer Orin Snyder wrote in a statement also reprinted by Reuters. The Justice Department has asserted that Apple, along with those publishers, conspired to raise retail e-book prices in tandem 'and eliminate price competition, substantially increasing prices paid by consumers.' Apple battles Amazon in the e-book space, with the latter company achieving great success over the past few years by driving down the price of e-books and Kindle e-readers; while Apple co-founder insisted in emails to News Corp executive James Murdoch (son of Rupert Murdoch), that Amazon's pricing was ultimately unsustainable, the online retailer shows no signs of flagging with regard to its publishing-industry clout."
E-book pricing is a sham.
Can't prejudice such as this get Apple's case thrown out?
We merely got the main players together to allow them to conspire to fix pricing via our market, thus screwing other outlets like Amazon.
Get over it,
Steve
In few short years (three, maybe four) they went from being innovative company creating groundbreaking products to being a pain in the ass. Now they represent the worst aspects of corporate America: from tax evasion to legal system abuses to price fixing to screwing up their own customers on every possible occasion. With their innovation pace fading and their products increasingly lagging behind competitors. Maybe it's time to fire their management and hire some less parasitic, more innovative CEO ?
A judge without a pro-Apple bias! It's a miracle. Hey, maybe Samsung should counter-sue for more patent violations with this guy so they might actually get a fair trial for once.
This is today's dumbass Slashdot summary of the day.
It's early yet.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
What the market will bear.
(IOW, how willing people are to be screwed.)
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The real question is whether the Judge presiding over a trial is allowed to make that kind of comment *before* the trial has started.
Thirty four characters live here.
It's amazing how many people assume that since it's a judge it must be a man. If you read the summery her name is Denise and they say in the summery " Apple's legal counsel is a bit perturbed over her comments"
amazon has won
ibooks is crap, and that's saying it as an ipad owner
the ibook store is crap as well. pain in the a$$ to use
no web book reader like the kindle
amazon is cheaper and amazon has kindle singles and now you can write your own fan fiction
those costs are tiny in the price of an ebook
most of the cost of an ebook are in editing, making the cover art and marketing
EVERY book has to be professionally edited by multiple people. no matter how good or popular the author is. one editor checks for grammer, another for story flow. and there are one or two more kinds of editors but i don't remember the functions. figure $50 an hour or more for each one.
Unless I'm mistaken, this charge is about the condition that ebook sellers cannot allow their products to be sold anywhere for less than on ITS.
There's never been any doubt that they did that. The argument is whether or not it constitutes something illegal, and the judge was apparently not convinced by the preliminary arguments.
those costs are tiny in the price of an ebook
most of the cost of an ebook are in editing, making the cover art and marketing
EVERY book has to be professionally edited by multiple people. no matter how good or popular the author is. one editor checks for grammer, another for story flow. and there are one or two more kinds of editors but i don't remember the functions. figure $50 an hour or more for each one.
..are you implying that printing it on paper, putting in boxes, shipping to a bookstore and putting on display and taking back returns has a negative cost?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The actual printing cost of any paperback where more than a thousand coppies are produced is a buck or two. You can print a single copy of a 6"x4" 100page paperback(color cover) for $5.25 at http://www.lulu.com/calculators/bookCalc.php?cid=publish_book
Yes, that is one of the purposes of a pretrial hearing. The judge has to determine whether or not the case should proceed to a trial or be dismissed. In order for there to be a trial, the Judge has to determine if the party bringing the lawsuit (the federal government in this case) has enough evidence to warrant a trial. The Judge also has to make a preliminary judgement about how likely the party bringing the lawsuit will win. This is needed in order to determine whether any preliminary injunctions should be issued prior to the trial (i.e. an injunction that takes place and stays in force until the trial is completed or another hearing reverses the injunction).
no, but you still have the editing costs and Amazon takes 20% or 30% commission for selling the book. along with the whispernet fees for any customers who download over 3g.
the printing/shipping costs were always around 10%. the selling costs are still there with amazon/apple taking the commission instead of B&N
I can't donate e-books, so for me to break even the price needs to be no more than 70% of the paperback face value.
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
And the real answer is "yes". In certain circumstances, they are even required to (e.g., the standard for granting preliminary injunctions, often sought before trial, is explicitly call for a determination of the likelihood of success on the merits.)
EVERY book has to be professionally edited by multiple people. no matter how good or popular the author is.
Uh, no. You think there's an editor who tells Stephen King to rewrite his story?
And at the other end of the scale, mid-list authors have been complaining that no-one did a story edit on their novel and the copy editors left typos in the back-cover blurb, not just the interior of the book.
In any case, that's work that only has to be done once and can be purchased on the open market for at most a couple of thousand dollars. It's cheap compared to printing 10,000 copies of the book, and once you've produced the edited print version you just reformat it for the e-book.
Probably because from Apple's perspective, all Apple did was let the publishers set their own book prices.
If you go open a physical book and look at the inside cover you will see something like the following: MSRP $19.99
MSRP stands for Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price. It is a suggested price. The seller can sell below this. (stores will slap a 30% off sticker on the book) Legally, suggesting a price is different than enforcing a price with a contract. They don't set prices on physical books because there is case law saying that is illegal. Basically this issue has already been through the courts.
Amazon has that exact sort of deal if you want to list items with them: The item's price at Amazon must be the lowest. Your price at other places can match it, but not be any lower. (Doesn't make Apple doing it any better or worse, of course. They're both being douchebags.)
I would also assume that Amazon taking the 20% cut for an ebook is very similar to the cut they would take on a regular book as well.
I believe for hardbacks and trade paperbacks, the retailer typically buys the books at about a 50% discount (which is why book stores can afford to have tables of new best-sellers at 30-40% off the list price). They can also return them if they don't sell, so the publisher has to cover the cost of those books too, and the shipping, and pulping the ones they can't sell.
Mass market paperbacks typically aren't returned, they're just binned and the cover sent back for credit.
The whispernet fees are uniquely Amazon and only for kindle users, so I don't think that should calculate in.
It's also added on top of the e-book price, so has no effect on the publisher's royalties.
But, hey, claiming they're evading taxes sounds better, doesn't it. /eyeroll
Maybe in your universe not in mine. In my mind I have more respect for real criminals not massive corporations who can legally buy off the political system, so they can essentially pay no tax...When I work long hours and am heavily taxed and cannot afford an accountant to hide my money in a foreign company...or throw a politician a few Million in return for Billions.
EVERY book has to be professionally edited by multiple people.
Have you seen some of these "professionally edited" ebooks?
True. It's not as though Amazon have any competition in the e-book business other than B&N. Like, you know, Apple, Kobo, Sony, etc, etc..
Why are we not talking about being able to buy from multiple sources. Why are we talking about a format tied to a device.
Capitalism is about profit. Specifically, maximizing it.
That is a nice Straw man you got there. Setting your prices as high as possible is not the same as setting your prices to maximize profit. Lowering prices can lead to more sales resulting in more profit. Free Market Capitalism is about letting supply and demand dictate where the price will be. Apple has attempted to abuse contract law to have the government enforce a price control. Anti Trust laws are about enforcing Free Market Capitalism. They are there prevent control of supply and to prevent price manipulation. What Apple is pushing is Crony Capitalism.
I fail to see the victim here. Nobody has to buy an e-book. They can try to fix the price they will sell an e-book at all they want. It requires a buyer to agree to that price for a sale to take place.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
It means that you can't offer someone else a cheaper price than you offer Amazon, but you are allowed to offer ANY price.
If you offer it to everyone at a 3000% profit margin, then that is the price that Amazon will take.
If you offer it to three publishers at a 120%, 180% and 200% then Amazon will only accept the 120% mark-up.
If you offer it at a loss, Amazon will take that offer.
When ebooks first became available I thought that this was a great opportunity to have access to more of them for a cheaper price. After all, the costs of printing and distributing them is reduced to practically zero. Granted, there are still editing and some other minor costs, but very little in the scheme of things. But before I actually purchased an ebook reader I watched the costs of the books for a while. Quickly it became clear that a dead tree version was almost always cheaper than the ebook version and once I had it, nobody could take it away on a whim or technicality. Suffice it to say that I never bought an ebook or a reader, but I still buy, read and enjoy plenty of great books.
Screw you, you greedy bastards.
How is that a troll? It was pretty funny and obviously intended as such.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Do you have a citation for that $50 figure? My sister has written a novel and I lack the time or interest to even read it but I want to support her. My question is not because I doubt you but because I'd like to gift her a line edit or a base edit and I'd like to know what the costs should be while I comparison shop. It appears that there are a number of sites that are out there that offer this service and that a good number of them charge by the word. When they charge by the word, somewhere around $0.002 to $0.0085 seems to be in the normal range from my initial research. I do not know what the average editing word rate per hour (ewr/h? I'm just making phrase up.) would be.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Uh, no. You think there's an editor who tells Stephen King to rewrite his story?
Of course he has an editor. Don't be silly. See Wikipedia for example, they mention his editor by name at least once. A simple Google search would have revealed to you that he uses an editor. I don't think any professional author doesn't use an editor. They'd be crazy not to.
Citation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_King (The word "editor" is used 7 times in that article.)
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Pardon my formatting. I should use an editor too.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
http://dvagency.com/agents/
Chuck Verrill is his Literary Agent's name and that's his firm. Contact information is on the site. You can submit your recommendations to Stephen King through his agent.
Why? I was really bored and wanted to see how complicated it was to find that information. It wasn't all that difficult really. I'd say that it took maybe five minutes to find and confirm it through multiple sources (in case you're curious). I figured, as well, that if I was going to go through the effort that I should probably share it with you seeing as you indicated a willingness to give your suggestions to him. He's a nice enough fellow, King - not his agent (I've never met his agent), and genuinely easy to talk to. We've met a half dozen times or so and he frequented a writer's group that I used to attend at the Bangor Public Library.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
So now you short or wait and buy depending on your opinion of apple.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Thank you for that. You've given me an idea which will surely make my sibling happy. Much appreciated. I knew the resources were there for this sort of thing, I knew the costs were fairly trivial for my intents, and I know that she'll appreciate it. However, I hadn't thought of it. She's recently authored a novel, published it online, had some raving reviews and some 4000 or so "likes" where she published it. I'll have someone design a cover (or hack away at it until I manage something acceptable) and I'll get her a handful of copies of her book in paperback format.
Thank you for linking that which gave me the idea to do this. I, and I'm sure she, appreciate it a great deal though it may not have been your intent.
I'd also like to get the book edited but the book would be a surprise. I'm not sure that I'd want to get it edited behind her back, without her input, or without her knowledge. That may be going too far and may not be appreciated as much and could be seen as tampering with her art as she'd have no input. What I'll probably end up doing is getting a small order of paperbacks printed up in the current format and then, when I gift them to her, present her with a coupon, voucher, or log-in credentials to a prepaid account with an online editor. When they've resolved that and settled on a final version I can just get another small order printed up that she can share with friends and family. Perhaps the initial order will be just a single copy so that she can actually hold it in paperback form - it's inexpensive and all that but it is still something that she'd enjoy. Spending less on the initial order would mean I could spend more on the fully edited copy and get her more copies of her work.
So, yeah, thank you. You're probably thinking that it isn't much of a gift (well, the editing is likely to be expensive) but it is really a "thought that counts" type of situation where it really is the thought that counts. It is something that will make her immensely pleased and will be the highlight of her year (or perhaps longer, knowing her) and will be seen as something quite valuable to her. I realize that your intent wasn't this but I'm pleased and grateful that your link triggered the thought and the results should be quite emotional.
It is also smaller than my gift to her last year. It will require less food though I suspect this one will cost me more and will cost her less. Last year I bought her an Arabian horse. It was on sale and she'd wanted an Arabian since she was a child. It had been a lifelong dream for her so it was rewarding to be able to fulfill that dream for her. Given her love for books I also suspect that the books will last longer than the horse will although I don't actually know anything about the longevity of horses.
And so, thanks again. Butterflies flapping wings causing hurricanes and all that. Much appreciated and surely much appreciated by her.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Interesting thoughts but they made me think... I think the price of media has gone down, not up, when adjusted for inflation.
VHS cassettes used to be anywhere from $60 to $120. Amazing, I know. These days it is $10 for a DVD.
CD prices have remained much the same, they appear to have gone down a bit actually, which definitely means a lower price when it's adjusted for inflation.
Books have gone up a bit more than inflation but part of that is likely due to the increased cost of paper. Paper has gotten more expensive, we're now expecting mills and timber harvesting operations to be good stewards of the environment which adds significant costs. (I dare say the price is worth it.)
eBooks are what the market can bear or is willing to pay (except in conditions of collusion, like this suit points out) and I think that, from a publisher's view, they are selling you a license to the content or a physical copy of the content. The content, for the most part, is the same - they're selling you an experience of reading the content. Thus, to them (I'm guessing here - I'm not one of them), the idea is the same and thus the price should be the same. Their goal is price maximization and profit, they'll sell it at whatever they want to sell it at. (What that leads to is a whole other subject but it is the way things are.)
In all of these cases they're really not selling you anything except a distribution platform (a DVD, a CD, or a dead tree printed book) but, rather, they're licensing it to you. You own the physical media but your rights to the content within are limited so to them (again, I'm guessing - I am not one of them) it is pretty much the same thing regardless.
Don't get me wrong, I pretty much agree with you on everything except that the price is actually lower than it used to be in many areas. Books are an exception though I still see some priced at around $5.00 (they were much cheaper when I was a wee lad by the way). I can only imagine that's because the price of paper has increased (and it has, see the increase in printer paper pricing for example).
Actually, let me be more specific, see the increase in printer paper pricing for printer paper that is made in the United States. A lot of the paper comes from other countries that do not have the environmental laws that we have. (The debate over the value of such laws is another topic entirely, I'm personally in favor of them and consider the price increase to be worth it.)
Like I said, I agree with you. It is only logical that the price for digitally delivered material to be less than the physical copies of that same material. There are very few benefits to getting a digital copy in my experiences though there have been some nice technical manuals that included links to online content that made a difference.
However, to them, I see little incentive to price them differently. Why should they? You're going to pay so they may as well make a greater percentage of profits on the digital forms. I suppose they have bean counters who also factor in the cost of the increased personnel to maintain the digital infrastructure, the cost of servers, the cost of power, the initial setup costs to also offer digital forms, and things like that. I doubt that, spread over a bunch of purchases, it adds up to a great deal more but that too must be considered and, still, they have no incentive to offer lower prices.
I'm not saying that what they're doing is right but it is what I'd expect a business to do these days. If they have something you want then they're likely to price it at a point where it maximizes profit while still not dissuading MAJORITY of people from making the purchase. I guess that's kind of the point of businesses today. They don't really look towards long term profit or the good of society (a healthy society is more likely to be able to support that business for longer but they seem to ignore that part) these days. They seem to be all about maximizing quarterly profits at the expense of good will or good stewardship
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
That sounds sound. It is kind of how I remember it as well though I (sadly) didn't pay much attention to the legal cases back then. I was unconcerned about things like First Sale and pretty ignorant of even copyright. My how the times change.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
EVERY book has to be professionally edited by multiple people.
Are you suggesting the ebook version has to be re edited?
I'm not saying the ebook should be free. But if I have a choice between purchasing a physical book at 10% of a suggested price of 7.99, or the ebook at 7.99 or higher... I'll choose the physical book. I'm getting the same content. But I'll save my 10 to 25%.
Actually, lately, I've stopped purchasing books from the big 6, because of this practice. So they aren't even getting my 10% of 7.99 anymore. The independents get my money now.
EARN MONEY EARN MONEY