While publishers have agreed to a settlement in the ebook price-fixing case involving Apple and all the major book publishers, the judge has ruled that Apple is guilty with its iBookstore, according to Reuters. The U.S. Department of Justice will now have to determine damages in the coming months.
Back in April 2012, the DOJ wrote an antitrust complaint against Apple and six major book publishers in the U.S. Initially, Apple found the complaint “fundamentally flawed” and “absurd.”
When the iBookstore was unveiled in 2010, the agency pricing model took over ebook stores. Amazon was the big guy and Apple the newcomer. Publishers were scared of Amazon’s dominance. They didn’t want razor-thin margins after giving back author royalties. Instead of paying $9.99 for new releases, books were priced at $12.99, $13.99, $14.99 or even more. And book publishers agreed to put the same price on the Kindle Store, the iBookstore and every other ebook store.
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(Photo credit: Casey Hussein Bisson)
