“‘Terrified’ by Amazon’s Kindle e-reader and discounted e-book pricing, five major publishers allegedly acted together to increase e-book prices and compel Amazon to abandon its discount sales strategy. That’s the gist of a new class action antitrust lawsuit filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California by the Hagens Berman litigation group. The five book sellers named in the suit are HarperCollins, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan, Penguin Group Inc., and Simon & Schuster Inc, plus one more defendant: Apple. ‘Fortunately for the publishers, they had a co-conspirator as terrified as they were over Amazon’s popularity and pricing structure, and that was Apple,’ charges Hagen Berman attorney Steve Berman. ‘We intend to prove that Apple needed a way to neutralize Amazon’s Kindle before its popularity could challenge the upcoming introduction of the iPad, a device Apple intended to compete as an e-reader.'” I’m starting to see a pattern here.
I’ve already said what I think in a previous comment http://www.osnews.com/permalink?482407 . For those who don’t want to click here’s the quick and dirty: in the publishing world Amazon is evil and Apple is good.
How are higher prices for a ~zero cost bit copy, good?
Having read your comment, 9.99 is more than enough for a book, if not a little bit excessive.
It would argue that that the price depends on the nature of the book and the size of the said market – an academic book that only a small percentage of the public will buy and took many years of research to create will cost a lot more than a best seller fiction book.
True, I was thinking about literature. My bad
I tend to avoid fiction anyway – I’ve never been a fan of fiction even when I was younger, if I was going to spend time reading something I’d sooner it have direct relevance in some way to my life than some form of escapism that fills in time with no real end benefit.
Well, you’ve got to relax somehow … Everyone’s got his way – some people like to read some good old novels.