Apple and Slew of Publishers Accused of Colluding over E-Books Prices
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Jeff Bezos and the folks at Amazon redefined the e-books readers market back in 2007 when they introduced the Kindle, and since then, the device has enjoyed an impressive track record. Until the introduction of the iPad mid last year, the Kindle had virtually no viable competitors, and was the undisputed king of the market.
Now that tens of millions of iPads have been sold, things are much less rosy for Amazon’s eReader. In a little over a year, Apple managed to take a large portion of the eReader market away from Amazon, and is now getting close to catching up with its competitor.
But here is a piece of news that will rejoice the Amazon CEO: Apple and a slew of publishers are being sued by a Washington-based law firm for e-books price collusion. Joining Apple are Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin, as well as Simon & Schuster.
According to the lawsuit filing, Apple is allegedly involved in an illegal pricing scheme, designed to prevent the sale of discounted e-books, in order to “neutralize the Kindle when it entered the e-book market with its own e-reader, the iPad.” The scheme described by the lawsuit is simple: Apple allegedly convinced publishers to stop selling their titles on Amazon if the prices offered by the online retailer were lower than the prices of the same titles sold via iBooks, a move designed to keep the Kindle at bay. So far, Apple and the incriminated publishers have declined to comment.
While this lawsuit is new, the debate over e-books pricing is not. Last year, Amazon already tried to do the exact same thing, as the retailer tried to prevent publishers from selling their titles at lower prices to its competitors, and even temporarily stopped selling some titles to show how serious the company is about the matter.
As usual, the actual loser here is neither Apple nor Amazon, but us, the consumers.
