![]() ![]() Law firm Hagens Berman is bringing a class action suit in California against Apple and the big five publishers on behalf of book buyers. "The commission has concerns the publishers may have colluded to raise the price of ebooks and that Apple may have facilitated this," says the commission's competition spokeswoman, Amelia Torres.Īgency deals will also come under scrutiny in US courts. European regulators fear consumers may be paying too high a price to keep the American retail superpower at bay. ![]() "What the publishers have done is stopped Amazon from crushing the independent ebook retail sector."Īmazon has lobbied furiously against the agency model. "The whole point of the agency model is to prevent the emergence of monopolists like Amazon," says Benedict Evans, a digital media expert at Enders Analysis. The model was designed by Apple, but subsequently forced on Amazon, and has been adopted mainly in the UK and US, by Waterstones, Canadian group Kobo and Barnes & Noble. ![]() Publishers set the retail prices and bookshops take a 30% cut on each copy sold. The agency deals apply only to digital books. It was a move intended to force the world's largest bookseller to relinquish control over pricing. So they agreed to a business model proposed by Apple just before the release of the first iPad. Worried about declining physical book sales, publishers feared Amazon's eye-catching discounts would devalue their electronic product. The European commission will probe the "agency" deals signed between Apple and five of the biggest publishers: Hachette Livre, Harper Collins, Simon & Schuster, Penguin and Macmillan. They are to lift the lid on a power struggle between the publishing industry and Amazon that could determine the shape of the book trade for years to come. This month, both the European commission and the US department of justice have announced investigations into ebook sales. ![]() By common consent, January will be a record month for digital books.īut regulators, both in Europe and the United States, are worried that shoppers may be overpaying. The British bought 12.7m ebooks in the first half of 2011, double the amount for the same period last year, according to the Publishers Association. ![]()
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