Bookwi.se

I have posted about ebook price fixing settlements in the past.  The short version is that the US Department of Justice sued 5 of the 6 major publishing houses as well as Apple for colluding to fix the prices of their books.  That is because they all signed an agreement for what they call Agency Pricing.  Agency pricing said that no one could sell the books at any price other than the price set by the publisher.

By definition this is price fixing.  The publisher said that with ebook, the ebook stores such as Amazon are not actually the retailer, but but an agent for the sales, so it was not price fixing because it is the publishers themselves that are the retailers.

Macmillan was the last of the publishers to reach a settlement with the DOJ according to CNet and other new sources.  Unless there is a settlement prior, Apple is schedule to go trial in June for orchestrating the price fixing agreement.

Amazon announced in October that under the terms of prior settlements, consumers that purchased ebooks under Agency pricing model from April 2010 to May 2012 will be entitled to $0.30 to $1.32 per book purchased depending on a formula that a judge is expected to approve today.

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If there is something that is lacking for the kindle, it is book management.  Many people are like me and have increasingly large ebook libraries and no good way to manage them.  Calibre has been the main option.  I use Calibre primarily to convert books between format or to correct book metadata.  But I have always thought Calibre was missing the boat on device syncing and working with Amazon on document management.

Scida is a new app for Mac design to just manage Kindles, Kindle books and Kindle Collections.

Scida is trying something different from Calibre.  So when I first tried it out I was not sure what it did. It does not convert between formats, it does not download metadata for books (although you can correct book metadata).

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