Seal of the United States Department of Justice (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Department of Justice sued HarperCollins, Hachette, Apple, Macmillian and Penguin over price fixing. Essentially, Apple proposed that the publishers should be able to set the retail pricing of their ebooks instead of the retailer. When the iPad came out, five of the six major publishers in the US worked together to require all ebook sellers sell their books at the same price.
The Dept of Justice said that this was price fixing. Last week three of the publishers had their settlement with the Dept of Justice approved. Apple, Macmillan and Penguin have not settled. For more info
This morning, I noticed that a lot of HarperCollins books made small drops in price. And the phrase “This price was set by the publisher” is now removed from their books. So now Amazon is setting the retail price for HarperCollins books.
I don’t expect huge price drops for most books. But I do anticipate that most books will be below $10 by the end of the day. The changes seem to be trickling in. I am tracking over 800 books at ereaderiq and so far this morning about a dozen of my books have dropped and I can see lots of movement among other books. Mostly $0.50 to a dollar.
HarperCollins owns Zondervan and a number of other imprints.
Some examples of price drops:
The Abolition of Man by CS Lewis now $8.50 from $9.99
What Now? by Ann Patchett now $9.66 from $9.99
The Upside of irrationality by Dan Ariely now $10.33 from $11.99
Sacre Blue: A Comedy of d’Art by Christopher Moore now $10.94 from $12.99
Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson now $7.59 from $9.99
