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 left to pick on, is framing the last defendant standing, Apple, as the "ringmaster" in the price-fixing suit, according the New York Times. With the case set to go to trial June 3 in New York (and what a fine note on which to end BEA), I find myself wondering: At...

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 the best-sellers list dropped to $7.21, a record low, according to DBW. One of the more interesting notes from DBW’s research is that $9.99 doesn’t seem to be a popular price anymore. This price point has been reserved for newer popular books and those that retailers can definitely...

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 as the lone publisher that settled with the DOJ as to not have books discounted. Amazon is still hanging on to “This price was set by the publisher” tag on the site for Penguin books. The Macmillan discounts have ranged from about $1 to $2 off the original price. Silver...

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)...

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 most media coverage completely miss the point about Amazon's success. If a picture is truly worth 1,000 words, I'll save you a lot of reading: That's from an improptu D.C.-area get together of KindleBoards members (I'm the yellow sleeve on the bottom left.) Four Kindle owners; 12 Kindles. Think that's a...

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, not included in the price-fixing case, will be bound by the terms of the Penguin settlement. Who owns how much of what? For those who are keeping score, according to the announcement: Following completion, Bertelsmann will own 53% and Pearson 47% of Penguin Random House. It will encompass...

  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 the antitrust case brought by the Justice Department involving allegations that Macmillan and four other publishers plus Apple Inc. (AAPL) conspired to raise e-book prices. Read Full Article... Source: Global Finance * * *      ...

Michael W. Perry's political rant about the cause and ramifications of the DoJ price-fixing case definitely touched a nerve this week with a good number of readers. Some of you found Perry's thought-process and logic to be a bit twisted, while others didn't think the essay had any place being published on TeleRead at all, given its rather over-the-top political overtone. Perry has since responded with a 2,200-word comment, and it's nothing if not a doozy. Click here to give it a read....

By Michael W. Perry Yes, the judge in the Google Book Settlement clearly listened to what writers were saying, particularly [the approximately] 90 percent of them who wrote in opposition to it (including me). This judge seems less open to news from the trenches or the facts of the case. Keep in mind that there’s another and more mature market that demonstrates just how effective agency pricing can be at keeping prices down and quality high. That’s the apps for Apple’s iDevices. One reason I opted for the latest iPad rather than a MacBook Air is the marvelously low prices for impressive...

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 is having a hard time wrapping its collective head around the now-approved e-book pricing settlement situation. And that's a shame, because this particular case offers anyone who's interested a fantastic opportunity to observe the process of free-market capitalism in all its exquisite absurdity. I'll be the first to admit that all the...

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 in order to compete. And retailers are free to discount books as they see fit—packaging them into bundles, and so on. So ... where's the problem? The problem is that there's a clause in the settlement, stating that the retailers' discounts cannot exceed their commissions overall. (No...

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 Office of the Attorney General of the State of Connecticut, the three publishers "have agreed to pay a total of more than $69 million to consumers to resolve antitrust claims of an alleged unlawful conspiracy to fix the prices of electronic books (eBooks). They have also...