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Watchmen it ain't, but the brief condenses complex arguments admirably. The anti-trust case against Apple, Macmillan and Penguin, all accused of conspiring to fix ebook prices, thunders on, but one part of it is shortly to come to a close. Three of the originally accused publishers – HarperCollins, Hachette and Simon & Schuster – agreed to settle with the Department of Justice in April this year, and that settlement is finally coming through.
Apple and four publishers are reportedly trying to come up with an agreement that would make both Amazon and European regulators happy, as a way to settle an e-book price-fixing investigation. According to a source speaking to Reuters, Apple and the publishers are proposing a plan under which other e-book retailers—namely, Amazon—could sell e-books at a discount, rather than at the price set by publishers. The European Commission has not yet accepted the offer, according to Reuters, but is informally "market testing the commitments"…
The three major publishing houses charged with e-book price-fixing have reached a settlement collectively worth $69 million with nearly all state attorneys general, the District of Columbia, and some American territories. Under the agreement, which was announced late Wednesday and still must be approved by the court, the Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster will award consumers monetary compensation if they purchased e-books from those publishing companies between April 1, 2010 and May 21, 2012.
Three and a half years ago, I had an e-reader unwillingly thrust upon me. I ignored it at first; shunned it. Then one day I was packing for a long trip and it came on me in a flash that if I used the damned thing I wouldn’t have to limit myself to five pounds of books in my luggage. Since then I read more ebooks than physical books. I buy a lot more books, too. Last year I noticed that books were getting cheaper, but the writing was getting worse.
In an amicus brief responding to the DOJ’s proposed ebook pricing settlement against Apple and publishers, attorney Bob Kohn says the DOJ unwittingly showed that Amazon used predatory pricing on ebooks, and asks that the DOJ’s investigation of Amazon be turned over to the court.
With U.S. District Court Judge Denise Cote expected to rule on a proposed ebook pricing settlement between the U.S. Department of Justice and three publishers by the end of August, Judge Cote confirmed that Apple may provide a further five-page objection by August 15.
Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster have agreed to settle in response to the DOJ’s allegations that they colluded with Apple to fix ebook prices.
Journalist Lynn Sherr has landed a book deal for a biography of the late Sally Ride, the first American woman in space.
The book will explore “the unusually private woman beyond the spacesuit,” including recollections from her partner, Tam O’Shaughnessy–Ride’s obituary revealed that the astronaut was a gay woman.
Microsoft rolls out the Zune to go up against the iPod in 2006. And then, three years later, a new Zune HD to vie with the iPod Touch. The Zune gets more traction with late-night talk-show comedians than with consumers. Both the player and the brand are now dead. Burger King gives away a free AOL Music download with every Original Whopper. The download code is on the burger wrapper — try not to get grease on your screen! McDonald’s begins renting DVDs. Actually, this one wasn’t a total flop: Turns out people don’t want DVDs with their fries, but Redbox, which now has
Just one year after moving from San Francisco to New York, Vook is enhancing its cloud-based e-book publishing platform this week. Vook, which has made its name by enabling non-techie types to publish their work electronically, is now rolling out features such as an HTML5-based reader that will let many tablets and smartphones pull up titles published through the platform.
Matthew Cavnar, Vook’s vice president of business development, who demoed the new features at this month’s NY Tech Meetup, says it’s all part of the company’s strategy to further disrupt the publishing world.
On Thursday afternoon, the Free Library of Philadelphia was ready to go with a Sept. 6 event for Joe Posnanski, the author of Paterno, a forthcoming biography of the famed and vilified football coach. On Friday morning, the books publisher told the library to cross it off the calendar. Theyre holding off on the tour, Andy Kahan, the director of author events for the Free Library, said on Friday, adding that the publisher, Simon & Schuster, had said Mr. Posnanskis work obligations prevented his appearance. Simon & Schuster is backpedaling quickly in the final weeks before the publication of
