TeleRead: News and views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics » department of justice

Is anyone still paying attention to the DOJ/ebook antitrust case?

Brian Howard — Sat, 18 May 2013 16:47:07 +0000

I guess I’d forgotten. Now that all the the publishing players have settled, abandoning agency pricing and returning to the wholesale slums, the DOJ/e-book antitrust case, which popped up again in everyone’s news feeds this week, feels a little anticlimactic. The DOJ, perhaps simply because it’s what it found, or perhaps because there’s no one [...]

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Average price of best-selling e-books on the decline

Susan Lulgjuraj — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 15:45:57 +0000

E-books seem to be costing consumers less money. Digital Book World tracks the prices of e-books on the best-sellers lists every week. Last week, the news site found e-books on the lists averaged more than $8 a book. After a week where a new publisher (Macmillan) allowed discounted prices, the average price of e-books on [...]

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Retailers begin discounting Macmillan e-books

Susan Lulgjuraj — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 14:04:10 +0000

Retailers are finally discounting Macmillan-published e-books – nearly two months after it settled its Department of Justice’s price fixing case. Prices of e-books have been lowered on sites such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble, according to Publishers Lunch. This includes books such as Silver Linings Playbook, Killing Lincoln and Ender’s Game. That leaves Penguin [...]

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Morning Links: Price-fixing, the death of Google Reader, and more

Joanna Cabot — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 13:00:46 +0000

Publishers: Go Hybrid! (Future Book) DOJ Price-Fixing Case Has Generated Over 8 Million Pages of Evidence (Publisher’s Weekly) The Killing of Google Reader Highlights Risk of Relying on Single Provider (Techdirt) Self-Publishing Takes Center Stage at San Francisco Writer’s Conference (Media Shift) Kindle Daily Deals: The Galaxy Project by Robert Heinlein (and 3 others)

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Amazon Isn’t Evil

Juli Monroe — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 19:30:53 +0000

Yes, you read that headline correctly. When the DOJ lawsuit against the publishers came out last year, it became a lot more about Amazon and their alleged monopolistic practices than it was about the publishers and their alleged collusion. Now three independent bookstores are suing Amazon and the publishers for anti-trust violations around DRM. Lawsuits and [...]

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DOJ Approves Penguin Random House Merger

Juli Monroe — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 20:37:01 +0000

One hurdle down. Several more to go with the EU, Canadian Competition Bureau and various other antitrust authorities around the world still needing to weigh in on this. Penguin’s settlement with the Justice Department was a move to smooth the way for this merger, and it looks like that move worked. Note that Random House, [...]

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BREAKING: Macmillan Settles with DOJ on Price Fixing

Juli Monroe — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 17:30:07 +0000

Apple is now the lone hold-out. As you may recall, three publishers—Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster—immediately settled, leaving Penguin, MacMillan and Apple to fight it out in court. Penguin settled in December, probably to protect their pending merger with Random House. And now Macmillan joins its fellows. Macmillan CEO John Sargent cited financial reasons [...]

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Macmillan Says Renegotiated E-Book Deals Allows Some Discounting

Aggregated Content — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 01:26:44 +0000

Macmillan, the last of the major publishers still fighting the U.S. Justice Department over antitrust charges, says it has renegotiated its e-book deals with retailers to allow some discounting. In an open letter posted on his book-publishing company’s website Wednesday afternoon, Macmillan Chief Executive John Sargent said the firm is still committed to fighting [...]

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Morning Links: Penguin settles with DOJ; NYT publishing e-books

Joanna Cabot — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 13:52:11 +0000

eBooks Can Unify Backlist for Prominent Authors (Digital Book World) The Slow But Steady March Toward Paid Content (Scholarly Kitchen) Google Play Books Introduces Read-Aloud Feature (Good E-Reader) Penguin Settles with Department of Justice in eBook Pricing Case (Paid Content) Kindle Daily Deal: Pocket 47 & Three Others * * *

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Antitrust experts say publishing is not a special case

Chris Meadows — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 14:30:57 +0000

Do publishers deserve special treatment from anti-trust courts? Paid Content reports on antitrust experts who said no at a New York book event this week: “There’s never been a defendant sued for antitrust who didn’t think their market was special,” said Chris Sagers of Cleveland State University, adding that “agency pricing” (a commission-style pricing system [...]

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RoyaltyShare founder Bob Kohn appeals denial of his right to appeal DoJ agency pricing settlement

Chris Meadows — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 01:52:21 +0000

I’m a little late, but I wanted to bring up just one story that popped up between the times I was at The Digital Reader and here. I’ve been following the saga of RoyaltyShare founder Bob Kohn at length with some interest and more than a little amusement. (That’s Kohn in the photo to the [...]

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Ebook pricing and the DOJ. What’s it all mean?

Aggregated Content — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 03:03:31 +0000

By Brian Howard Nothing cast a pall over the publishing world like news of the Department of Justice’s e-book price fixing case against Apple and five of the Big Six publishers. While Apple, Penguin and Macmillan aren’t slated to go to court until 2013, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, and HarperCollins have already settled, and [...]

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How To Understand the DoJ’s E-Book Pricing Settlement

Dan Eldridge — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 04:43:47 +0000

It’s been my experience that avid readers tend to be the sorts of people who take great pride in their intelligence. And intelligent people, for reasons that are obvious enough, aren’t always forthcoming when they encounter complicated subjects they don’t entirely understand. I mention this because I suspect that a decent portion of the e-reading community [...]

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Agency Pricing Settlement: Higher prices on the way?

Joanna Cabot — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 18:32:34 +0000

An article over at Paid Content proposes an interesting theory: That the recent Department of Justice ruling on the agency pricing issue could actually lead to higher book prices—not lower. This seems inexplicable at first: Only three of the Big Six publishers were named in the ruling, but the others may find themselves lowering prices [...]

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Three Publishers Settle with 49 States

Dan Eldridge — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 20:55:21 +0000

Bloomberg Businessweek seems to have been one of the first publications to report that 54 attorneys general in (49 states and five American territories) have collectively reached a $69 million antitrust settlement with Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers LLC and Simon & Schuster Inc., “over alleged price-fixing for electronic books.” According to a press release from the [...]

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