I'm not naive enough to believe that if given options, consumers would abandon Amazon and Apple en masse and rush to independent e-bookshops. But the publishing industry certainly isn't making it any easier for smaller companies to compete.
The Department of Justice complaint against Apple and five major publishing houses reads like a case study: A powerful, entrenched industry desperately tries to confront an economic disruption caused by the rise of a new technology, only to face charges of violating federal law.
Just like that, Apple is officially on the receiving end of a major antitrust lawsuit filed this morning by the U.S. Justice Department for alleged e-book price-fixing.
J.K. Rowlings’ Harry Potter books have sold around 450 million copies worldwide — all of them made out of an ancient material your parents know as “paper.” Today, the entire series is entering the digital age, selling as e-books on the Pottermore website.
Did you notice that e-books became a little more expensive after Apple entered the game with iBooks? So did the U.S. Department of Justice, which may be threatening to sue Apple and e-book publishers for allegedly colluding to raise prices.
Jonathan Franzen and other famous writers that won’t be reading novels on a Kindle anytime soon.
If you build it, they will come. Not just words of wisdom from a Kevin Costner movie anymore, but the experience of libraries across America. They’ve seen a triple-digit jump in the amount of digital lending during the last year due, in part, to the increased use of tablet devices such as the iPad, Kindle, and Nook.
We’ll be there (and live-blogging) at Apple’s “education event” this Thursday, Jan. 19 at New York’s Guggenheim Museum, but the scuttlebutt going in has Cupertino announcing a platform to — wait for it — “digitally destroy” textbooks.
The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library sounds like a good deal, with more than 5,000 Kindle e-books available for free if you have an Amazon Prime subscription. But many of the most popular titles are filler in the form of public domain books, self-help books and video-based workout instructions.
Amazon’s bringing free Kindle e-book rentals to Amazon Prime members, but a bunch of restrictions make the service less attractive than it could be.
If the price of digital books has ever struck you as seeming too high, you’re not alone. Digital booksellers and major book publishers alike are facing no less than 17 class action lawsuits alleging digital price fixing.
