For years I’ve been complaining about how Apple and five book publishers got together (ie. colluded) to unfairly set the price of e-books. Before Apple launched it’s iBook store it was common to buy e-books on Amazon for $9.99. Many e-book readers rightfully felt that e-books should be substantially less then their print counter part (a.k.a. dead tree edition) due to the greatly reduced cost in the product. No longer were monies being used for the processing of paper, ink, binding, transportation cost, and warehousing (just think of the carbon footprint on a single book!). I’m all for people making money and I’m more than willing to pay for books, but I’m also always looking for a way to save money. If this gave the authors the same cut they got before and the consumer got to save money by purchasing an item that was no longer physical it all seemed good.

When Apple decided to get into the e-book business they convinced five willing publishers (Simon & Shuster, Harper Collins, Penguin, MacMillan, and Hachette) that e-book prices should be raised to take into account the 30% cut Apple wanted, plus it then had them agree to not allow any other retailer (eg. Amazon, B&N, etc.) to sell books for less than what Apple was willing to sell them for. Suddenly the price of e-books shot up 30% or more. In some cases e-books were (and still are) priced higher than print books. Why were the publishers so willing? To me this is an industry trying to protect and old way of doing business and prop up all of their suppliers (paper, transportation, bricks-and mortar stores). This happened with the music industry and the film industry will be the next to be hit with the new digital trend. It should also be taken into account that Apple wanted 30% just to facilitate the transfer of data from their servers to your iBook device while the authors were getting their usual 5-15% of sales. To me, it is grossly unfair that the person who created the book is getting a fraction of what Apple was demanding from the publishers.

I had always felt that this was an anti-trust matter. The EU courts decided it was as well and this past summer they named Apple and the publishers mentioned that they were going to take them to court. That’s was great, but in North America it’s the US Dept. of Justice that can really put the pressure on US companies. Today the Wall Street Journal wrote that the DOJ had given notice to Apple and their cohorts that they were going to be sued for price fixing. FINALLY!!!!! You go DOJ!!