DoJ Investigates eBook Price Fixing 165
dave562 writes "The U.S. Justice Department's antitrust arm said it was looking into potentially unfair pricing practices by electronic booksellers, joining European regulators and state attorneys general in a widening probe of large U.S. and international e-book publishers. A Justice Department spokeswoman confirmed that the probe involved the possibility of 'anti-competitive practices involving e-book sales.' Attorneys general in Connecticut and, reportedly, Texas, have also begun inquiries into the way electronic booksellers price their wares, and whether companies such as Apple and Amazon have set up pricing practices that are ultimately harmful to consumers."
Amazon doesn't always set the price, publishers do (Score:5, Informative)
This is something that has had a lot of discussion in the past on various e-book forums. The publisher sets the price, not Amazon. When you submit a book for resale on Amazon they take their 75% or 32% cut depending on what you select (books under $2.99 are generally only eligible for the 75% cut).
A lot of independents have been working the 99c book sale pricing but lately we've been finding that it's just about impossible to make any sort of sane living at those levels, so we're gravitating more to the $1.99 and $2.99 brackets, sometimes pushing to $4.99 if it's a book from a popular series (Amanda Hocking, David Dalglish etc).
I'd be very surprised if any action is taken against Amazon, while they do have a strong hold on the distribution market of eBooks they aren't (yet!) controlling the publishing prices.
Most of us are just self-publishers in the eBook market, it's almost like the whole OpenSource software movement all over again.
http://elitadaniels.com/ [elitadaniels.com]
Re:I always wondered... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:zzzz (Score:2, Informative)
One of them is even trying to get an open source math textbook project going.
Reasons: The books are too expensive, they keep shuffling around the problems and other text, and they are loaded with mistakes that they never correct, even when hundreds of people write to them to explicitly point out the errors and the corrections. Please note that they tend to come out with a 'new edition' every year.
Cheap eBook Webstore (Score:5, Informative)
Probably interesting to most Slashdot readers, but I have most of my ebooks from a webstore called www.webscription.net
The publishers here include ones such as Baen, Del Rey, Tor, etc.
Fairly focused on SciFi/Fantasy, but almost all their books are in the $4-6 price range, a lot of them are older books, they have a quite extensive free library, and allow you to download in a number of formats, all DRM free.
Jim Baen alone has probably done more for the SF/Fantasy book world than any other publisher out there and I find the fact his publishing company stands behind this very promising.
And as a sidenote to all you US readers that think not a lot is done for disabled veterans: They give away everything for free if you're one..