price-rigging
Latest
E-book discounts appearing at Amazon following publisher settlement
Wow. Judge Denise Cote certainly knows how to put a spring in the step of mega corporations. Mere days have passed since she ordered HarperCollins to let retailers to set their own e-book prices, and yet already Kindle bestsellers from that publisher are selling for around $9.99 -- in some cases that's $15 off the list price. Under the same settlement, Hachette Book Group and Simon & Schuster must also give retailers like Amazon greater flexibility over prices, so we may well see more lowered prices soon. The one place you won't find such discounts, however, is the iBookstore, since Apple has opted to fight the Justice Department and go to trial alongside Penguin and MacMillan next year.
E-book publishers are now being investigated in the US, not just Europe
Just two days after the European Commission announced that it was investigating Apple and major international publishers for possible e-book price fixing, the US Justice Department has made it clear that it's also launching a probe into the possibility of "anticompetitive practices involving e-book sales." Although Justice Department officials didn't name which companies they're looking into, it's very likely that they're focusing on the same agreements between publishers and the major e-book platform owners -- either Apple or Amazon or both.
Apple and major publishers investigated for e-book price fixing in Europe
The European Commission has opened a formal antitrust investigation into some of the world's largest publishers following a series of unannounced inspections back in March. Hachette Libre, Harper Collins, Simon & Schuster, Penguin and the German owner of Macmillan are all suspected of "anti-competitive practices" in the way they've sold e-books in Europe, "possibly with the help of Apple." Read on for the full press release.
