Kindle News: Amazon announces more on the eBook pricing settlements. What it means, what's next with Apple's part?

Amazon announcement about "eBooks Settlements"

An announcement came in our emails today and in Amazon's Kindle Forum late last night (Friday, Aug 30, by David A., Forum Moderator), but some don't always see their emails and most don't know about the Kindle Forum, so I'm quoting the info, as written, here (emphases via italics are mine), as their announcements are meant for wider circulation.

' Last fall we notified eligible Kindle customers that they may be entitled to a credit for some of their past Kindle book purchases as a result of legal settlements between several major book publishers and the Attorneys General of most U.S. states and territories.  Since then, two more publishers have settled and these new settlements have increased the amount of the credits customers will receive.

Eligible customers will not need to do anything to receive this credit. If the Court approves the settlements in December 2013 and there is no appeal, a credit will appear automatically in eligible customers' Amazon.com accounts that can be used to purchase Kindle books or print books.

  We will notify eligible customers when the credit is applied to these accounts. While we will not know the amount of each customer's credit until the Court approves the settlements, it is estimated that it will range from $0.73 to $3.82 for every eligible Kindle book that was purchased. To be eligible, customers must have a U.S. billing address and must have purchased a Kindle book published by Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Penguin or Macmillan between April 1, 2010 and May 21, 2012.

These publishers will provide the funds for the settlement. You can learn more about the settlements at http://www.amazon.com/help/agencyebooksettlements.

We think these settlements are a big win for readers because they will return over $165 million directly to customers and they also impose limitations on publishers' ability to raise eBook prices.

Thanks for being a Kindle customer. '

And this is before any settlement related to the DoJ-Apple case and Judge Denise Cote's 'remedies' to be announced this coming week, as well as whatever happens in connection with Apple's responsibilities with regard to the several antitrust lawsuits brought by a coalition of state Attorneys General and by a Plaintiff Class.

  The July 10, 2013 Wall Street Journal article (written by Chad Bray, Joe Palazzolo and Ian Sherr, with contributions from Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg and Jacob Gershman) reported on federal judge Denise Cote's ruling that Apple had colluded with five major U.S. publishers to drive up the prices of e-books.

  The WSJ report explains that, "As a result of the ruling, Apple is exposed to "as-yet undetermined damages and opens the door for the Justice Department to take a closer look at its other business lines."

  The DOJ's proposed remedies, including their revised proposal about a week ago, are likely to be met by a somewhat softer approach by the judge, who would prefer to not interfere with Apple's day-to-day business dealings as much as the DoJ proposes.

  Apple's response to the ruling is that they've "done nothing wrong" and they're appealing the ruling.  While the Big5 publishers and Apple have 'explained' that they were working against a monopoly power (Amazon) to make the e-book market more competitive, the WSJ team writes, "... the ruling raises questions about the leverage Apple may have when negotiating future content deals" since they are known to drive hard bargains.  What's important:

' "Under antitrust law, you can not only prevent the unlawful conduct, but also prevent other conduct that can lead to a similar result," said David Balto, former policy director at the Federal Trade Commission.

Because Apple was found liable for violating U.S. antitrust laws, a separate trial on damages will take place in a lawsuit against the company brought by 33 state attorneys general, who are seeking to recover money on behalf of consumers who paid higher prices for e-books.
  Apple also faces a private class-action suit alleging price-fixing.   The private plaintiffs could recover damages from Apple, provided their legal claims are distinct from the states'. '

At any rate, the credits for individual books appear larger than most had been expecting.

REMINDER These are the last two days -- 11:59 pm on September 1 is the ending date -- for the large Kindle Fire tablet discounts available for college students who have, or who join, the Prime membership program for $39/yr, with free access to something like 18,000 instant videos and the ability to borrow one book a month from the 400,000+ Kindle books Prime Lending Library (Link is (http://amzn.to/kprimebooks ), with no waiting times or due dates.


Image credit: readingebooks.net


Related articles
TIMELINE:  Ebook Pricing Wars - what DOJ would have seen.
Also, History of the e-book pricing wars
  and some recent articles:
  DOJ, Apple, and Judge Cote -- status, as of August 27
  Links to the latest stories that were written after the blog article here on August 12 about DOJ recommendations and Judge Cote's consideration of proposals for remedies in the e-book pricing case.
  1. Citing Steve Jobs email, DOJ claims Apple changed in-app purchase to retaliate against Amazon - by Laura Hazard Owen for GIGAOM
  2. E-Books Judge Pledges to Avoid Unnecessary Intrusion Into Apple's Business - by Julie Clover for MacRumors
  3. Apple E-Books Judge Cote Says She’ll Limit Antitrust Remedies - by Bob Van Voris for BloombergBusinessweek
  4. Apple says tempered e-book penalties still go too far - by Joan E. Solsman for CNET.

Judge Cote said that she'll sign a final order spelling out the remedies next week.

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Current Kindle Models for reference, plus free-ebook search links.

US: Updated Kindle Fire 2 Basic  7" tablet - $159 Kindle Fire HD 7" 16/32GB - $199/$229 Kindle Fire HD 8.9" 16/32GB - $269/$299 Kindle Fire HD 8.9" 4G 32/64GB - $399/$499 Kindle NoTouch ("Kindle") - $69/$89 Kindle Touch WiFi - $99 Kindle Paperwhite, WiFi - $119/$139 Kindle Paperwhite, WiFi+3G - $179/$199 Kindle Keybd 3G - $139/$159, Free slow web Kindle DX - $379 $299 (Yes)

UK: Kindle Basic, NoTouch - £69 Kindle Touch WiFi, UK - ~£89 Refurb'd Kindle Keyboard 3G, UK - £149   Keybd: w/ Free, slow 3G WEB Kindle Paperwhite, WiFi - £109 Kindle Paperwhite 3G, UK - £169 Kindle Fire 2, UK -  £129 Kindle Fire HD 7" 16/32GB, UK - £159/199 Canada - Kindlestore, CDN-$ Kindle Basic, NoTouch - $79 Kindle Paperwhite, WiFi - $129 Kindle Paperwhite, 3G - $199 Kindle Fire HD 7" - 214.00 KFire HD 7" $214,  8.9" $284

*OTHER Int'l pages* Kindle NoTouch Basic - $89 Kindle Keybd 3G - $189   Keybd: w/ Free, slow 3G WEB Paperwhite WiFi $139, 3G/Wifi $199 KFire HD 7" $214,  8.9" $284 France Boutique Kindle Deutschland - Kindle Store Italia - Kindle Store Spain - Tienda Kindle Brazil - Amazon BrazilRp China - Amazon China [?] Japan - Amazon Japan

[College students with Prime membership: discounts of up to $70 off Kindle Fire tablets until just before midnight Sept 1.]

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Check often: Temporarily-free recently published Kindle books
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.  Liked-books under $1
UK-Only: recently published free books, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

  *Click* to Return to the HOME PAGE.  Or click on the web browser's BACK button

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Kindle News: 17 more states join class action suit. Excellent timeline and guide to points in DOJ and Class Action lawsuits

17 more states join class action against Big5 and Apple, with new details revealed.

paidContent's Laura Hazard Owen reports that New York, Washington D.C., and 15 other states "have joined the e-book pricing class action suit against Apple, Macmillan and Penguin, bringing the total number of states involved so far to 31 (if you include DC and Puerto Rico). "

Owens' piece is a more in-depth look than we've seen with other news-site reports,
She adds that, unlike the Department of Justice (DOJ), the states seek monetary restitution for consumers and have already reached, as we've seen earlier, a settlement with Hachette, Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins.

With that amended complaint comes new information that's been made public, though it's not clear why it was redacted from the version filed in April.  Much of that newly-public information (in the state's amended complaint) is found in the DOJ filing against Apple and the publishers, but new details include an e-mail from Steve Jobs that shows him becoming directly involved in the agency pricing negotiations "after [Apple's] Eddy Cue could not secure one of the Conspiring Publisher’s commitment directly from an executive."

We see yet another admission or confirmation that the publishers (and therefore presumably their authors) did make more money under the older, wholesale model despite many arguments made in forums by authors (who were asked by their publishers to join forum discussions) that the authors' revenue would be less under Amazon's traditional wholesaler arrangement.

' Macmillan CEO John Sargent attempted to negotiate with Apple’s Eddy Cue on a way to make agency pricing less painful for publishers (publishers actually make more money under the wholesale model, where they are paid based on a book’s retail list price, than from the agency model).

Asking Apple to help, then, by taking a reduced cut
On January 11, 2010, Sargent wrote to Apple in an e-mail, "Am thinking a possible way to ease the financial pain for the publishers and authors of moving to the agency model.  Could you take a reduced cut on hardcover first releases (where we are presently making 14.00 in revenue and would make 9.00 under your assumptions)?"
  Apple did not agree to take less than its customary 30 percent cut. '

Now, "hardcover" is mentioned there, but e-book 'suggested retail prices' were set by publishers under the traditional agreements (often set, in 2009, at $26), and Amazon, it's been explained often, usually paid about 50% of that publisher-set retail price to the publisher, EVEN when Amazon sold a bestseller e-book at $9.99, a price that made the Big5 nervous about the devaluing of their hardcover books.

  Many authors did actually believe that they'd make less when an e-book was discounted by Amazon, and I think the publishers let many of them believe and say this in forums.  There was a lot of rancor in the forums between some authors and customers as a result.

Publisher e-mail
Then a publisher, Owens points out, emailed the parent company's CEO Jan. 21, 2010 that

' [Apple's Eddy Cue] … was eloquent on why they would be a great partner, that price could and would be experimented with as Apple want [sic] to drive high revenues; that this would be for a one year term; that one major publisher (clearly RH) was out and that ne [sic] need the five majors in but maybe four. He said that he was sure he would close on two today and two tomorrow... '

Steve Jobs's e-mail
Jobs stepped in and wrote to a resistant executive at one of the "Conspiring Publishers," outlining the choices the publisher had, the only semi-attractive one being

' Throw in with Apple and see if we can all make a go of this to create a real mainstream ebooks market at $12.99 and $14.99. '

As we saw, the Big5 e-books actually came to sell between $12.99 and $19.99.

E-mails to Barnes & Noble - who became quite active in all this
After the Big5 and Apple agreed on the Agency model and pricing, the amended class action complaint, Owens explains (bold-facing mine):

'...says the five publishers “worked together to force” Random House to adopt it as well.

  On March 4, 2010, in an exchange also identified in the DOJ’s filing, Penguin CEO David Shanks sent Barnes & Noble’s then-CEO Steve Riggio an e-mail reading in part,
  “Random House has chosen to stay on their current model and will allow retailers to sell at whatever price they wish…I would hope that [Barnes & Noble] would be equally brutal to Publishers who have thrown in with your competition with obvious disdain for your welfare…I hope you make Random House hurt like Amazon is doing to people who are looking out for the overall welfare of the publishing industry.” '

While this is one CEO (of one of the two publishing companies that have not settled) writing to Barnes and Noble, it's an indication of an atmosphere of concern stated often (within the complaint) that the "conspiring publishers" needed more publishers to stay together on all this to get Amazon to agree to the Agency model and its higher, non-competitive pricing.

B&N's management did decide not to feature Random House in any future advertising, the complaint says.  And most who follow this pricing war know that Apple refused Random House books a place in their iBookStore.  Random House is said to be the largest U.S publisher of novels.  Neither Apple nor B&N are "Gas 'N' Groceries on Route 19" stores taking defensive measures against giant Amazon.  But that latter is Authors Guild President Scott Turow's most recent fantasy.  I feel bad for the authors who are represented by this guy whose forte seems to be a mixture of fantasy and bad melodrama, when he refers to Amazon as the 'Darth Vader of publishing.'

And, as I said in late April, Turow even refers to Apple as "a minor player in the realm of books" (the minor road-store that could, in one day, successfully encourage a jacking-up of e-book prices an average 50% (to $20 at the high-end), nation-wide, on new books, and even deny Random House space for its e-books because RH would not cooperate on the Agency model.  Yep, Apple's just a small store hoping to get its size 3 foot in the publishing door.

The Club
When discussing what I'd deem normal book business practices of 'windowing' or staggering different releases of a book, if not done in lock-step, the publishers "referenced themselves in one email as ‘the Club!’"  That was in connection with windowing discussions, and, as Owen says, not agency pricing discussions with Apple.  But a club seldom calls itself that over one small facet of whatever brings them together as co-members, but the label does tend to speak to group focus of some type, in this case having to do with e-book pricing.

Downloads linked at the paidContent story:
The states’ amended complaint (5/11/12)
The states’ original complaint (4/11/12)
The Department of Justice’s complaint (4/11/12)

I've left out a lot of detail and a table of how Apple calculated its e-book prices in publisher contracts, but you can read the full details at paidContent's story.


ALSO: EXCELLENT "DOJ LAWSUIT UPDATE" by "Dear Author"

MANY interesting points are made in this piece that explains what is happening here, Mr. Jones, step-by step.  Fascinating read, because I remember hearing about all this as it was happening and then it all tended to fade and blend together, but she [Jane] lays it all out, in no-nonsense manner.
  I'll just quote the opening paragraph from her huge list of info-points with explanations of what some of the actions described indicate.

'  Collectively the Big 6 account for approximately 60% of all revenue generated from print titles sold in the U.S. and 85% of all revenue generated from the sale of NYT Bestsellers.
  In 2009, the publishers’ market share broke down as follows:  Random House (17.5%), Penguin (11.3%), Hachette (10%), HarperCollins (9.8%), Simon & Schuster (9.1%), and  Macmillan (5.4%) '

So, if you're interested in what is essentially a detective story with all the pieces starting to come together, go to Dear Author for the step-by-step guide.


Earlier and related:
TIMELINE:  Ebook Pricing Wars - what DOJ would have seen.

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Current Kindle Models for reference, plus free-ebook search links (non-Big5)

US: Kindle Fire  7" tablet - $199 Kindle NoTouch ("Kindle") - $79/$109 Kindle Touch, WiFi - $99/$139 Kindle Touch, 3G/WiFi - $149/$189 Kindle Keybd 3G - $189, Free, slow web Kindle DX - $379, Free, slow web

UK: Kindle Basic, NoTouch - £89 Kindle Touch WiFi, UK - £109 Kindle Touch 3G/WiFi, UK - £169 Kindle Keyboard 3G, UK - £149   Keybd: w/ Free, slow 3G WEB

OTHER International Kindle NoTouch Basic - $109 Kindle Touch WiFi - $139 Kindle Touch 3G/WiFi - $189 Kindle Keybd 3G - $189   Keybd: w/ Free, slow 3G WEB

Check often: Temporarily-free recently published Kindle books
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.  Liked-books under $1
UK-Only: recently published free books, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

  *Click* to Return to the HOME PAGE.  Or click on the web browser's BACK button

Read More

Kindle News: Federal judge refuses to toss out class action lawsuit on e-book pricing, citing damaging Apple statements. 56-page ruling download.

U.S. District Court Judge Denise Cote refuses to toss out a nationwide class action lawsuit against Big5 and Apple filed in August 2011.

Associated Press's Larry Neumesiter reports that, in her written ruling, District Court Judge Cote cited Steve Jobs's statements, one that was video'd in answer to Walt Mossberg of WSJ at the initial iPad launch event ("the prices will be the same"), and one that was made to biographer Walter Isaacson about what Steve Jobs had told the large publishers named in the lawsuit ("the customer pays a little more, but that's what you want anyway").

The argument for dismissing the class action lawsuit was that Apple and the publishers named were just improving the efficiencies of distribution, but the judge rejected that, saying,
  "It has everything to do with coordinating a horizontal agreement among publishers to raise prices, and eliminating horizontal price competition among Apple's competitors at the retail level."

  AP's Neumeister adds that Apple had said last year that the charge that it had conspired with the major book publishers to raise the prices of e-books was not true and that it had instead (as Neumeister's explains their position) 'fostered innovation and competition by introducing its iBookstore in 2010 and said customers had benefited from e-books that are more interactive and engaging.'

  Neumeister's AP report states that
  'The judge wrote that Apple had a "strong incentive" to encourage publishers to agree together on the rules for e-book sales so that its iBookstore did not face stiff competition' and that 'With the fortuitous entry of Apple into the market for e-books, and the decision by Apple to join the price-fixing conspiracy, that horizontal conspiracy became a potent weapon for engineering a fundamental shift in an entire industry," the judge said.'

The ruling means that the class action can proceed to trial.

The Department of Justice settlements
  As we saw earlier, the U.S. Department of Justice had reached a settlement with Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster.  The AP report on the district court judge's ruling says that the federal government is proceeding with its 'lawsuit against Apple and Holtzbrinck Publishers, doing business as Macmillan, and The Penguin Publishing Co. Ltd., doing business as Penguin Group.'  The settlement reached with the other 3 publishers is expected to help them avoid the class action lawsuit.

WSJ article on Judge Cote's ruling
The Wall Street Journal's "Cheat Sheet" article by Saul Griffith today described the ruling as a "damning indictment of collusive practices between Apple and five major U.S. book publishers," and Griffith quotes the judge further:

"In short, Apple did not try to earn money off of eBooks by competing with other retailers in an open market; rather, Apple 'accomplished this goal by [helping] the suppliers to collude, rather than to compete independently.' "

WSJ's Griffith adds, in his article titled, "Outlook Turns Gloomy as Judge Slams Apple in E-Book Case" ['Gloomy' was changed from 'not good'] :

' The proceedings probably ignored Apple's more substantive (and hidden) agenda – to thwart the growing popularity of Amazon’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) Kindle tablet by depriving the company of the opportunity to sell low-priced e-book content through the legacy ‘wholesale’ book selling model it created and dominated, controlling over 90 percent of e-book sales before Apple jumped into the game. '

Apple Insider's Mikey Campbell quotes Steve Perman, lead counsel and managing partner of Hagens Berman, the law firm handling the class action suit:

  "We thought that Judge Cote’s ruling was spot on, especially when she noted that we’ve gone above and beyond in illustrating the legitimacy of our case ... We are eager to push forward with the case.”


The 56-page ruling in PDF format, available for download
Marketwatch points us to the 56-page ruling, available as part of a set of documents at hbsslaw.com.


Simple Timeline of events upon which the lawsuits are based
TIMELINE: Ebook Pricing Wars - what DOJ would have seen - March 12, 2012

Read More

Kindle News: WSJ on flawed arguments of Big-5 publisher defenders

Wall Street Journal's Thomas Catan writes, "Critics of E-Books Lawsuit Miss the Mark, Experts Say"

The Passive Voice, a lawyer, summarizes the WSJ article and then links us to the FULL Wall Street Journal article, which few do, and that link may expire at any time so if you want to read the full article, get it now.

WSJ's Catan notes that what Eric Hellman calls the "nightmare narrative being spun by the publishing echo chamber" on behalf of "the Collusive 5 publishers" has been front and center the last week in a circling-wagons formation (with what seems shared boilerplate) decrying the DOJ action against the poor Big5 and the ebooks savior, Apple.  Here is some of what attorney Passive Guy excerpted yesterday from the WSJ article:

' But many experts say that under antitrust law, the department didn’t have much choice.  And even if it did, antitrust experts say, it is far from clear that doing nothing would have been wise.

U.S. antitrust law doesn’t seek to protect little companies against big ones, or even struggling ones against successful ones. Companies can grow as large as they want, as long as they do it through lower prices, better service or niftier innovations. Companies can even become monopolies, as long as they don’t get there illegally or try to extend their power by unlawfully stifling competition.

Companies under pressure from a more successful rival can’t band together to protect themselves, whatever their size.
“A lot of cartels are [composed of] small firms,” says Herbert Hovenkamp, law professor at the University of Iowa. “The criminal cases the Justice Department brings are often family firms—much smaller than these publishers.”
....
“Price fixing is kind of the first-degree murder of antitrust violations,” Prof. Hovenkamp says. “They don’t have discretion to just walk away from what appears to be a strong set of facts that, if true, are one of the most central of antitrust violations.”

The government might already have shown some leniency. For one, the Justice Department brought a civil, rather than a criminal, case, so no executives will go to prison...
....
But as disruptive as Amazon’s pricing may be to publishers, it isn’t illegal, experts say.

“What Amazon does may be harmful to the publishers, but so far it’s been very good for consumers,” says Spencer Waller, a law professor at Loyola University Chicago.
....
....the law is concerned with protecting competition, not competitors, experts say.  Cartels, for example, usually allow more players to coexist by enforcing higher prices.

“The goal of antitrust policy is to protect consumer prices, Prof. Hovenkamp says. “It’s not to protect inefficient firms from having to exit the market.”
'

Mild-mannered Len Edgerly in an unusual, separate blog-posting that was not a podcast entry, at his The Kindle Chronicles Podcast site, pointed to the truly ludicrous column by David Carr for The New York Times, which described the Dept of Justice's action as akin to 'breaking up' "Ed’s Gas ’N’ Groceries on Route 19" (this would be the Big5 Publishers (!) and affecting even little B&N, apparently, which has put so many smaller book stores out of business).  He even refers to Apple as "a minor player in the realm of books" (more route-19-store fantasy -- the minor road-store that could, in one day, successfully encourage a jacking-up of e-book prices an average 50%, nation-wide, on new books, and, furthermore deny wee Random House space for its e-books for not cooperating on the Agency model.

 Big Bad Amazon vs the Gas 'N' Groceries on Route 19.  How do Carr and his editors publish a piece like that with straight faces.  They don't.  It's all about alignment and lack of any appropriate embarrassment when targeting readers they think are that gullible.  Edgerly mentioned other NYT articles of the same caliber and asked,as a 'loyal subscriber to the NYT's Kindle version, "Are ALL of the Times's objective [?], hard-hitting journalists in the pockets of New York publishers?"

The Wall Street Journal article is even stronger than described so far.  "Antitrust lawyers scoff at the notion that the Justice Department would refrain from bringing a case if it believes it has solid evidence."

  In fact, if you haven't, you should actually read the 36-page PDF with the FULL TEXT of the DOJ case against Apple and the Big5 publishers.  It's more eye-opening and truly riveting than most novels you'll buy.  It's also unbelievable at several points that the companies went as far as they did, even 'openly' requesting of one another that they hide what they were doing.

  Again, if you want to read the full WSJ article from yesterday, you should get it now while it's still available via the special email-sharing feature probably paid for by Passive Guy.

  It's interesting to see the photos of the CEOs behind each company after reading so much about them.

  Also, it has very sensible closing paragraphs.  What they describe is a business model that requests demands a form of public welfare from e-book consumers to protect the Big5 from the lower-profit margins they fear will be part of this digital age instead of focusing on how to restructure their businesses to DEAL effectively with the realities of the digital age.


I've gathered a lot of news lately, but will end this with just this one topic, as there is a lot of interesting reading involved in the DOJ case papers and, really, this affects, in a big way, those of us who are book readers via digital media.

  We're faced with a corporate mentality that would now deprive our public libraries of their new books in digital form for reading, with Penguin and others having voiced a need for "friction" in making it harder for anyone to borrow such a book (even if library reading has been shown to spur the general reading of authors and buying of books) so that, for instance, even if the library is an hour away, they should go there in person to borrow a book.  Four of the five publishers involved are not making their current new e-books available at public libraries at all now -- that's the depth of their fear of e-books and people who read them.

  Also, see Wired's Tim Carmody on DOJ Announces Terms of Settlement With Three Publishers in E-Book Suit.  He lists them and includes the proposed settlement doc.

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Current Kindle Models for reference, plus free-ebook search links

US: Kindle Fire  7" tablet - $199 Kindle NoTouch ("Kindle") - $79/$109 Kindle Touch, WiFi - $99/$139 Kindle Touch, 3G/WiFi - $149/$189 Kindle Keybd 3G - $189, Free, slow web Kindle DX - $379, Free, slow web

UK: Kindle Basic, NoTouch - £89 Kindle Touch WiFi, UK - £109 Kindle Touch 3G/WiFi, UK - £169 Kindle Keyboard 3G, UK - £149   Keybd: w/ Free, slow 3G WEB

OTHER International Kindle NoTouch Basic - $109 Kindle Touch WiFi - $139 Kindle Touch 3G/WiFi - $189 Kindle Keybd 3G - $189   Keybd: w/ Free, slow 3G WEB

Check often: Temporarily-free recently published Kindle books
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.  Liked-books under $1
UK-Only: recently published free books, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

  *Click* to Return to the HOME PAGE.  Or click on the web browser's BACK button

Read More

Kindle News: TIMELINE: Ebook Pricing Wars - what DOJ would have seen. Update

SIMPLER TIMELINE OF KEY ELEMENTS OF EBOOK PRICING WARS

At the Kindle Community Forums last night, I was struck by a few who actually insisted in the strongest terms that Apple's Steve Jobs and the Big 5 (which doesn't include Random House because they weren't allowed into the Apple iStore due to their disinterest in the Agency model at the time) had nothing to do with Amazon's raising prices and that Apple came into the arena later on..  So, I posted a timeline there and will include one here also, with an added paragraph.

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January 26, 2010
Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg wrote, for the Wall Street Journal at the time it happened (Jan. 26, 2010), before ebook prices were raised, that Steve Jobs was in NY, to talk with the big publishers, and S. Jobs was suggesting they charge higher prices and use Apple's Agency Model.

' Apple is asking publishers to set two e-book price points for hardcover best sellers: $12.99 and $14.99, with fewer titles offered at $9.99... '

Once they all came to an understanding and had Jobs/Apple as leverage against Amazon's insistence on lower prices for NYT bestsellers and once Jobs had the publishers behind his brand new iBook store (that had few books (~60,000) AND (as mentioned) he would not allow Random House, the largest publisher, into the iBook Store because they refused to do Apple's Agency plan), the Big5 publishers felt they could force Amazon to the Agency model by not providing e-books to them otherwise.

As we've seen, Walter Isaacson's biography of Jobs quotes him on this specific activity:

' "We told the publishers, 'We'll go to the agency model, where you set the price, and we get our 30%, and yes, the customer pays a little more, but that's what you want anyway."  They went to Amazon and said, 'You're going to sign an agency contract or we're not going to give you the books.' " '

January 27, 2010
THEN when Apple did the launch of the iPad the next day, a VIDEOclip at the end of the event, shows Mossberg asking Jobs why a shopper would buy a book for $14.99 from Jobs when they could buy it for $9.99 from Amazon.

Jobs says that this "won't be the case."

Mossberg asks (and this videoclip is part of the lawsuits) if Jobs meant Apple's wouldn't be $14.99 ... or that Amazon's wouldn't be $9.99.

Jobs paused and said "The prices will be the same."

And, as you can see, this was said -before- the bulk of NY Times Bestsellers went up to ~$12.99 to $14.99++ at all stores after having been at $9.99.  And customers have been quite angry when the e-book price is higher than the hardcover price.

  Here's the full videoclip and story.

January 30, 2010
On January 30, 2010, Amazon pulled Macmillan books over the Agency model issue. And then, as reported, Amazon "caved in."

February. 1, 2010 - from news story linked above

' Amazon.com says it will give in to publishing giant Macmillan and agree to sell electronic versions of its books even at prices it considers too high. '

That White Flag image headed my blog post of Jan. 31, and the opening was that

'Brad Stone of the New York Times just tweeted that Amazon has "capitulated" to Macmillan's terms. '

Stone moved on and is now a senior writer for Businessweek and seems to be able to write longer, even more detailed articles now.


So, it's all documented
It's also further confirmed by Isaacson's quoting of Jobs (see above) describing, in the biography how Steve Jobs and the Big5 did discuss it, did agree to raise prices that could not be lowered by any one store unless all of them were given permission by the publishers, and were telling Amazon that it would be the Agency model or nothing, with the new leverage they had from the iBookStore.


More detailed set of newspaper stories that includes much more than this
This set details the "History of the E-book Pricing Wars - Articles, Video, with Sourcing"
  As regular readers of this blog know, the set of detailed newspaper stories from that time in chronological order includes linked sources for all of it.  The set is at the bottom of that first page.

As I mentioned on the Kindle forums, I'd like some feedback if possible to see if this timeline is new to many and whether, maybe, most newspapers not reporting it in the substantial detail that a very few did served to keep it pretty much out of view of general readers.

I think that it seemed so political and publishing-focused at the time that most newspapers and readers were not following it closely.


Creative and very amusing take on the blog defense Friday by the President of the Authors Guild, Scott Turow
You can read this at Joe Konrath's blog posting, "Barry, Joe & Scott Turow."

  There are many indications that most authors would do better financially in the new world of digital publishing as long as they safeguard their rights to the e-book editions of their work.

UPDATE - Another article making some excellent points:
From Let's Get Digital, David Gaughran responds to Scott Turow in Scott Turow: Wrong About Everything   It's a strong piece.

  Thanks to Q for the URL.

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