{"id":20985,"date":"2021-01-15T07:29:48","date_gmt":"2021-01-15T12:29:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ebookrumors.com\/?p=20985"},"modified":"2021-01-15T07:29:48","modified_gmt":"2021-01-15T12:29:48","slug":"amazon-and-big-five-publishers-sued-for-ebook-price-fixing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ebookrumors.com\/?p=20985","title":{"rendered":"Amazon and Big Five Publishers Sued for eBook Price Fixing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.publishersweekly.com\/pw\/by-topic\/industry-news\/publisher-news\/article\/85318-amazon-hit-with-e-book-price-fixing-suit.html\"><strong>PublishersWeekly<\/strong><\/a> reports that a class action lawsuit has been filed against <strong>Amazon<\/strong> for <strong>eBook price fixing<\/strong> and names the <strong>big five publishers\u2014HarperCollins, Hachette, Simon &amp; Schuster, Macmillan, and Penguin Random House as co-Conspirators<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>The action is long overdue. Just one look at Amazon&#8217;s pricing of eBooks higher than their paper\/hardcover equivalents is all the clue you need. Also, it&#8217;s the same <strong>big five publishers<\/strong> that <strong>colluded with Apple in 2011 for<\/strong> (you guessed it) <strong>price fixing<\/strong>. At that time, the <strong>publishers settled the claims for $188-million<\/strong>, and <strong>Apple<\/strong> lost at trial so had to <strong>reimburse<\/strong> its customers for <strong>$400-million<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rationale:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The publishers <strong>over-price eBooks<\/strong> to <strong>force people<\/strong> to <strong>purchase paper\/hard cover versions<\/strong>. (And <strong>support their out-dated business model<\/strong>.)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Price fixing is a win-win for Amazon<\/strong>. They get more money from their percentage of the inflated-eBook purchase price, and the high eBook prices nudge people toward <strong>Amazon&#8217;s Kindle Unlimited<\/strong> &#8220;all you can read&#8221; <strong>eBook subscription service<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>PublishersWeekly reports that a class action lawsuit has been filed against Amazon for eBook price fixing and names the big five publishers\u2014HarperCollins, Hachette, Simon &amp; Schuster, Macmillan, and Penguin Random House as co-Conspirators. The action is long overdue. Just one look at Amazon&#8217;s pricing of eBooks higher than their paper\/hardcover equivalents is all the clue &hellip; <\/p>\n<p><a class=\"more-link btn\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ebookrumors.com\/?p=20985\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,3,4,5,8,25,15,13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ebookrumors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20985"}],"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=20985"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ebookrumors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20988,"href":"https:\/\/www.ebookrumors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20985\/revisions\/20988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ebookrumors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ebookrumors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ebookrumors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}