Apple and 5 publishers found guilty of E-Book Price Fixing

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2421552,00.asp

I know I've previously mentioned Penguin Books (one of the companies named in the lawsuit) as being a company that frequently has outragious pricing plans for their E-Books, sales that extend only to the physical books, e-book prices that are equal to or higher than the physical book prices, and so on. I knew that Apple had been suspected of price-fixing, but it hadn't been proven in a court of law until now.

So... what are the odds I'm going to get a partial refund now. (If they ever have a class-action lawsuit, I bet I could get paid... in about 9 or 10 years).

 

I always thought the prices of e-books seems atrocious. Not to self-promote, but that is one reason why I self-published. I couldn't stomach charging customers $10 or more for non-print version of a book. The biggest expense in books comes from printing things on paper. Advertising, editing and overhead costs for each individual book are laughably small when done on a per-book basis, so charging that much is just...hideous.

Also, and not to be insulting those who like the company, it doesn't surprise me that Apple was the ringleader of this. Whether you like their products or not the "Apple Premium" is a known fact and it was only a matter of time before it bled into other things. *sigh*

What would really help is if this taught a lesson to other publishers and actually fixed some of the market, but we'll see.

 

As much as I totally 100% agree with you, you may not want to say that in public place. Some of those Apple fans are rabid and will bite. Best way to deal with them is pretend that you aren't afraid (because they can smell fear) and back slowly away out of whatever room or vehicle you encounter them on. (I had to share 3 seats with a couple who were extremely rabid on a flight back from a science fiction convention -- and unfortunately I was stuck in the window seat).

But seriously, some Apple fans take their love to an unquestioning, almost religious place.

 

Aye, I am fully aware of that which is why I tried to say it in as non-insulting a way as possible hehe. On a forum, I tend to tell them to speak to me in a PM if they have a problem with my informed opinion and if they get violent I just tell them to meet me in person and send them a picture of me. That's where they never tend to argue with me anyway... (I'm no giant, but at 6'1 and 308 pounds most people think twice about arguing with me in person. I probably wouldn't last long in a real fight but I -look- like I could, and that counts just as well eh? )


The bad news about this topic is that I'm already seeing opinions and news reports about how this ruling will have little affect on e-book prices. I was kind of hoping otherwise...

 

Change takes time. They will have to lower prices some, but they will probably make a mockingly low discount and pretend the damage was never done in the first place.

I would rather pay twice as much any day for a good book verses a PDF or other digital copy. But I only buy hardbacks with good paper, so I have sadly excluded many otherwise good books because they have that cheap cardboard-like paper that crumbles after a decade or so. If I cannot pass the book to someone to read and pass on again, then it is a waste of money.

The most recent book I purchased was "The Fabric of the Cosmos" by Brian Green. It is a physics book written for people with no real knowledge of physics. I gave it to a 95 year old man that I know and he enjoyed reading it. I expect one day it will be passed to another in his family or one of the grandkids or such.

Buying an e-book is a disaster for this ideology. I *CANNOT* transfer the book if I understand the most common EULA for the books. So it benefits no-one but myself.

 

I thought that ebook price fixing was obvious enough that it could sort of be assumed long before this ruling (or indeed even befpre any official legal suspicion); sort of like how everyone knows that Al Capone was a mobster despite the fact that he was never actually convicted of smuggling or organized crime related charges.

 

Al Capone was a mobster?!?! Gasp!

Good point. Much like how everyone simply knows that car salesmen cannot be trusted in a general sense. Some may be more honest than others, but they would not make a living by being honest and telling customers that this years model is worse in every way than last years model.

I presume the worst most of the time and am happy enough to occasionally be wrong about how bad people are. Businesses are very rarely something I am wrong about.

 

I am so this kind buyer myself! with the exception of my sci-fi paperbacks (to me, somehow, some good sci-fi's just don't feel the same without the 'pulp' feeling)

I still vastly prefer physical books and not just because they are easier on my eyes, but just for the feel of a good book in one's hands. I still buy a few e-books but they are for one purpose and one purpose only: for when I travel. If I'm home I go to my library, but on the move I rather like being able to have books all on one device.

Aye, there's something about business that can bring out the truly worst side of humanity...

 

FYI: I just got an e-mail this evening from Amazon stating that I'm entitled to part of a settlement agreement with certain publishers for e-books I purchased, and that I will automatically be receiving a credit towards e-book or regular book purchases. I'm pretty sure that I'm entitled to one for some Penguin books that I had purchased (one of the publishers named in the class-action lawsuit) but there may be others I'm unaware of. Amazon only specifically mentions Penguin and Macmillan, but does say that other smaller publishers may have been part of the settlement.

I'm guessing I'll get a few bucks, but we'll see.

 

Is the market for books really so limited that it doesn't make sense to keep dropping price on ebooks? Or are publishers not only greedy (can't really fault them too much for that) but stupid as well?

I've been delaying getting a pad or a e-reader for just that very reason - it's not cheap enough. I can handle reading screens and it would save space - so if I also saved a good amount money I could get more books than I would otherwise.

 

I think they are just too greedy and really are afraid of giving up any control. Nowadays giving up control to most companies means losing their revenue and eventually dying. None of them can see that that is what is pushing them into a deathward spiral. I don't expect to see anything good on the ebook front except from Baen which has a monthly bundle sale on their DRM free ebooks. Those are mostly Science Fiction and Fantasy though so if you don't care for that type of book, you seem to be out of luck.

 

Yes and no -- average prices actually HAVE dropped on e-books, and Amazon, for example, frequently gives books away for free as promotions for new writers, has sales going on all the time, and so on. But there are still some publishers that are not competing because they really don't have to compete. For example, if you wanted to read any of the Sookie Stackhouse books (a very popular series, and the basis for "True Blood" on HBO), you will pay as much, and sometimes more than a paperback version because Penguin publishes them, and knows that they will sell at that price (after all, they sell the paperbacks at the same price). Some people I guess will say "well I like vampires but this vampire book is too expensive, so I'll buy a different one" But that's not how I shop for books -- maybe some people do. They are more likely to say "Well I like this author, and this is all that's available, so if I want it I have to pay the paperback price".

Thinking in terms of greed is ridiculous, because it's common sense for anyone that more money is better. But when it comes to older books or books by lesser or relatively unknown writers, that's when you'll see the lower prices and the give-aways. Amazon knows that if you promote an unknown author by putting their books on sale, or even giving books away fro free, that some people will enjoy that author and spend money. Furthermore, it only makes sense to sell older books for less money.

But in any case, the theory is that the price fixing was artificially maintaining higher e-book prices.

As far as e-books are concerned, I find it a lot easier to read from one -- I have the paperwhite Kindle, and I don't need to even turn on a light to read. It's certainly easier to read than a computer screen, and once you get used to the controls, is easier to read than a paperback. I can adjust the font or orientation (as some books use horribly small fonts, for some unknown reason), some of the e-readers actually use text to speech. My sister-in-law, though, listens to her Kindle in her car (I think that's highly dangerous, but try telling her that). I can look up words while I'm reading just by touching it on the screen. Nowadays I can even lend or borrow books with other people with Kindles (virtually everyone in my extended family has one). You can borrow books from the library without visiting it.

BTW, just as an experiment, you can go to the amazon website and search on free books -- I think you'll be surprised. Furthermore, there are several other websites where you can download free books that are out of copyright. I'd bet that about 3/4s of the books now on my kindle, I didn't have to pay for, and I got them totally legally.

So I assume that anyone who thinks that an e-reader is a bad investment must either not read all that much or mus tlove reading off of their computer screen or their cell phone or tablet, because e-books are a whole lot more economical than buying paper books. You can get an e-reader for under $70.00, or you can get free e-book utilities for any number of platforms.

/edit When I said 3/4s of the books, I meant by page count, since a lot of those free e-books are huge collections of complete works by certain authors.

 

BTW, I just checked, and Amazon is giving away 2,666 Science Fiction and Fantasy books alone. Admittedly some of those are just short stories, but still. Free is good. Free is a bargain.

If I don't narrow it down, the number increases to over 57,000 free books (I have no idea if any are duplicates of course, but if you are willing to check, the information is out there). And the list changes from day to day. I know my sister-in-law has told me that most of the books she reads she gets for free. I tend to spend a bit more money. But still.

And I know this is like beating a dead horse, but this is still free:
http://www.amazon.com/Wool-Part-One...=1378141336&sr=1-9&keywords=free+kindle+books

 

As a self-published / publisher I'd like to chime in on this issue and say that charging as much for an ebook as a physical book is greed, pure and simple. You can claim "market demand" and "good business" but it really boils down to greed. The only reason physical copies cost as much as they do is because of the cost of printing physical pages, binding physical pages, and shipping physical pages. I literally cannot charge 5 cents less for my physical books because at that point I would make zero profit. When you remove the costs of physically producing a book but keep the same price you have just increased your profits while lowering your costs, to the point where it has now become greed.

I realize of course as an independent company my overhead is vastly smaller than a larger company. That is why I don't expect to see the Big Boys charge only 99 cents like I do. But 14.99 for an ebook? I want to take a chemical bath after looking at those kind of prices.

 

I could say the same on that one. Because even if we just assume that a third of the price of a regular book is the cost of printing it (a rather modest claim in that regard, as it usually constitutes a bigger part of it), it means they could have lowered the prices by a third and still be getting as much money as they were.

Then again, they aren't the only ones to do something like this. Some time ago there was something about companies fixing prices for schoolbooks where I live, meaning that parents have to pay a lot more for them than they ought to have - a fourth up to a third of an average monthly pay for one set (and I would like to note that the "average" is 50% to 100% more than most people earn) so for many people it's half of their monthly pay to buy books for one kid.

And some people are wondering why there are more and more people who don't read much and thus become almost illiterate. Sure, there are libraries, but a kid won't go to a library if an adult won't show him to the place and an adult won't go there if he never learned to like reading as a kid, which brings us into a cycle of futility made of greed and stupidity.

Heck, the one reason I could "afford to get to like reading" was that my family had a rather extensive library of books from the past time (I guess that's the one thing "blue blood" is useful for in theses days, but whatever) and thus there was always something to read.

 

I totally agree, but VERY few publishers do that (and I assume those were among the ones named in the lawsuit). To put things into perspective, when a book is released in hardcover for, let's say $15.00, most e-book versions will probably cost you about $9.99 and often less. When the paperback is released, most of the prices drop again. With the exception of a few problematic publishers, e-book prices are lower than physical book prices, and I've noticed that, for example, Penguin now has lower e-book prices, so the lawsuit has made a dent.

As far as self-publishing is concerned, it USED to be a good bet that most self-published books were that way because the author couldn't find a publisher. But in the past few years, it's become a choice of some authors. Even big-name authors have been doing it, especially with short stories and short novels and reprints. I guess the only advantage of using a regular publisher now is the shelf space in physical bookstores, and advertising. That's not a small advantage, but it is a shrinking advantage. And it's little to no advantage for an unknown writer.

 

Completely agree, the prices are better than they used to be, although it still ticks me off at the higher "hardcover" price for an ebook....hardcovers cost more because they cost more to make! Ebooks don't cost more to make just because the physical book is hardcover! At least the industry is slowly shifting in the direction it needs to go.

Exactly true. In fact, I had two publishing offers for my work. Both times the publisher wanted me to add something, usually a sex scene or swearing or more violence, that I refused to add. I'm no prude and I believe everybody should be allowed to read/watch whatever they want, but those things don't belong in my books where they wouldn't fit. Both publishers also offered the insultingly low 5% mark. At that point I said no and embarked on the self-publishing journey and haven't looked back. I would recommend it to anybody, really. You make your own rules. It's tough, no doubt about it, because there are 60 billion voices vying for reader attention. But it's a blast.

 

The record industry has the same exact problem as the book industry. Artists, no matter their art, do not like being given insulting offers and required to stand on one leg and bark on command. That is one of the reasons I have so much respect for Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. He got sick of it and made his own publisher and allowed other artists to join on a very reasonable commission with zero requirements to do stupid crap on command.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Inch_Nails#Corporate_entanglements
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Null_Corporation

 

For me, I only purchase my favorite authors at full price. Most other books I buy on a sale if I can. If I like it but don't have a lot of money like now, I purchase them at used book sales or borrow them from libraries. I found a number of authors that have become favorites of mine because I was able to start reading their stuff cheaply or even for free. When I had a job, I would likely purchase 10 books or more within each 6 month period. I once purchased over 25 books in a 6 month period. At the time I was still getting books from the library and buying books at used book sales. Sometimes that's the only way to get some books because they are out of print.

 

The reason why books have gone out of print is because of shelf space -- stores want to replace older books older books on their shelves with newer ones so it doesn't pay for publishers to keep them in print. That's not really an issue with e-books, although for some reason, certain books HAVE gone out of print anyway (There have been problems with one of the Wild Cards publishers, for example, but I don't recall which one (whoever it was, was dropped). The books are finally coming back into print, although far too slowly for my taste. I've been impatiently waiting for book 3 to come back into print, and its taking forever. Hopefully this will happen a lot less going forward. And there's always the option of making books available with print-on-demand for those who don't want an electronic version.

And as I said, anything out of copyright can be obtained for free... if it is in print. Fortunately, there's Project Gutenberg, which may bring books back into print (assuming they can find a copy to translate from print).