News - E-book price fixing lands Apple with $840 million damages claim

[HEXUS]

"The conspiracy caused widespread antitrust injury to e-book consumers"

Read more.

[Nobull]

I have to say, I've never got why the ebook version is often much more expensive than the printed version. Far fewer costs (obviously). Always thought it was a bit fishy.

[crossy]

I have to say, I've never got why the ebook version is often much more expensive than the printed version. Far fewer costs (obviously). Always thought it was a bit fishy.

Increased proof reading costs, i.e. "0010001001000010001010111011100001100111100000101001000101...." takes a while to audit.

Joking aside I wondered too - especially as I'd assume that the vast majority of books these days are laid up digitally anyway, so surely it's just a case so "Print to eBook" in whatever authoring software is being used.

That said I just bought two Dale Brown technothrillers off of Amazon, the printed one cost me over £6 and the eBook £1.59, then again that second one was in Amazon's sale.

Back to the story in question though - time for punitive damages I think, with some going back to the "victims" (the consumers). How about a refund of $3 from Apple and another $3 from the publishers to go to the consumer, with the same amount again to go to federal government. Oh, and this would apply to every book sale on the Apple Book Store by the publishers concerned, not just the ones that had their price bumped.

[Dooms]

iBook's store has always been incredibly overpriced with a lot of books costing more than their paperbacks.

Amazon's Kindle store used to be just as bad but has improved over the last couple years. I've purchased loads of books from the kindle store and never paid more than £1.99 (mostly 49p or 99p).

[Funkstar]

I'm not 100% sure, but I think a lot of the price disparity is to do with the different pricing models used for the two formats. With physical books the retailer buys them and can then sell them at whatever price they want. The more they buy at a time, the better price they will get on it. The can sell at a massive loss if they want (often the case, especially in supermarkets with the latest blockbuster*). With eBooks it is the publisher that sets the pricing and the retailer just takes a percentage cut for handling the sale and transaction. So unless there is a special promotion negotiated with the publisher, the online ebook store has no control over pricing.



*Harry Potter books were usually sold at a loss by supermarkets and advertised heavily to get people through the door on the expectation they would then buy other things and the final transaction would lead to a profit for the store.

[jim]

And you have to pay VAT on ebooks, but not on physical books.

[Blademrk]

As I understand it, Amazon was selling eBooks at whatever price they wanted (they still paid the publishers RRP but then discounted the eBook to push Kindle sales).

Apple then entered the market and tied up the licensing deals with a "most favored nation" contract so that no-one could sell eBooks for lower than they were priced on iTunes.

Publishers bought into Apple's idea as they were afraid that consumers would expect eBooks to be priced at the cheaper level Amazon was pricing at.

Amazon had to agree to the licensing deal or they wouldn't be able to sell any eBooks from the publishers that had signed on to Apples licensing deal.