{"id":16016,"date":"2015-04-17T15:43:38","date_gmt":"2015-04-17T20:43:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ebookrumors.com\/?p=16016"},"modified":"2015-04-17T15:43:38","modified_gmt":"2015-04-17T20:43:38","slug":"the-big-four-publishers-will-return-to-price-fixing-i-mean-the-agency-model","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ebookrumors.com\/?p=16016","title":{"rendered":"The big four publishers will return to price-fixing&#8230; I mean the Agency Model&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to <a title=\"The big four publishers will return to price-fixing... I mean the Agency Model...\" href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/blogs\/moneybox\/2015\/04\/14\/what_the_amazon_harpercollins_deal_means_for_e_book_pricing_and_publishing.html\"><strong>Slate<\/strong><\/a>, <strong>Amazon<\/strong> has lost another battle, this time to\u00a0<strong>HarperCollins<\/strong>\u00a0that\u00a0has won the right to overprice its eBooks again. <strong>HarperCollins\u00a0<\/strong>joins the unique club of big publishers that\u00a0also won the fight with <strong>Amazon<\/strong>&#8212;<strong>Hachette<\/strong>, <strong>Simon &amp; Schuster<\/strong>, and <strong>Macmillan.<\/strong> You\u00a0might remember this bunch being found guilty for conspiring with <strong>Apple<\/strong> to &#8220;fix&#8221; prices on eBooks.<\/p>\n<p>Remember? It&#8217;s slightly more than\u00a0a year since these publishers finished settling\u00a0out of court before\u00a0the <a title=\"Read about the lawsuit here.\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/United_States_v._Apple_Inc.\"><strong>U.S. Justice Department anti-trust lawsuit<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0judgment landed on\u00a0<strong>Apple<\/strong>. These companies\u00a0settled out of court and repaid millions and millions of dollars that had been bilked out of consumers with the\u00a0<strong>Agency Model<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Somehow these publishers\u00a0can now\u00a0fix prices again, and <strong>Amazon<\/strong> is avoiding blame by adding a disclaimer to overpriced <strong>HarperCollins<\/strong>, <strong>Hachette<\/strong>, <strong>Simon &amp; Schuster<\/strong>, and <strong>Macmillan<\/strong>\u00a0eBook titles: \u201cThis price was set by the publisher.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It makes you wonder if there was any point to the <strong>U.S. Justice Department<\/strong>\u00a0lawsuit.<\/p>\n<p>Despite the setback for consumers, it may still be an opportunity\u00a0for Indie authors. Those that haven&#8217;t ransomed\u00a0their options\u00a0to <strong>Kindle Unlimited<\/strong>\u00a0are able to\u00a0price their eBooks fairly. (Indies invented fair eBook pricing, anyway.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to Slate, Amazon has lost another battle, this time to\u00a0HarperCollins\u00a0that\u00a0has won the right to overprice its eBooks again. HarperCollins\u00a0joins the unique club of big publishers that\u00a0also won the fight with Amazon&#8212;Hachette, Simon &amp; Schuster, and Macmillan. You\u00a0might remember this bunch being found guilty for conspiring with Apple to &#8220;fix&#8221; prices on eBooks. Remember? It&#8217;s &hellip; <\/p>\n<p><a class=\"more-link btn\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ebookrumors.com\/?p=16016\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,3,4,5,8,12,15,14,16,13,9,20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ebookrumors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16016"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ebookrumors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ebookrumors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ebookrumors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ebookrumors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16016"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.ebookrumors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16030,"href":"https:\/\/www.ebookrumors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16016\/revisions\/16030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ebookrumors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ebookrumors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ebookrumors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}