US government files antitrust suit against Apple over e-book pricing [u] - Page 7

If the gubment wanted cash off Apple, they would allow Apple a reduced-tax-break for bringing their cash pile back into the country.

Your problem is the ``overall profit'' portion.

This is a huge win for Amazon... and the consumer.

Not in the long run. One still needs content to sell. It's hard to continue to sell something at a loss and still remain a going concern if there are no other avenues that generate revenue. Prices should go up a bit on e books as people were ultimately buying less physical books. Publishers were already barely getting by on razor thin margins and hard covers. Let's not get into the whole piracy issue eBooks present.

Publishers should be allowed to sell their content for whatever price they want to. The problem with the governments case is that amazon and other competitors were given access to the iPad from the start.

I'm not sure Apple had a motive to drive competitors out of the ebook market. Their goal was to make the iPad a more attractive option and not be totally reliant on amazon. It's the same for the book publishers....they were totally reliant on amazon for their bread and butter. Apple needed a way for publishers to support its iPad directly.

Anti Trist law is motive dependent. I usually like what Eric Holder does but this is government overreach and I disagree with him on this. I'm actually stunned they brought this law suit up in an election year. Not a smart move when you are trying to convince people that the government isn't killing off business with bad policy and overly aggressive prosecutions.

You can bet Obama will hear about it on the campaign trail. All it takes is for a large segment of the tech voters to stay home and Obama and Eric will be sent back home. If Mitt Romney has a brain he'd beat Obama over the head with this. He's probably too out of touch to realize that he finally has an issue he can hit Obama with.

You're focusin on the $5 eBook bestseller when every technical book converted to an eBook on Amazon is often around 70%-90% hardbound price.

Example #1 Stewart's Calculus
Hardcover: 1194 pages
Publisher: Brooks Cole; 7 edition (January 1, 2011)
Language: English

Type: Amazon Price
Kindle Edition: $143.96
Hardbound: $173.93

Example #2: Mechanical Engineering Design: Shigley
Hardcover: 1088 pages
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Science/Engineering/Math; 8 edition (October 25, 2006)
Language: English

Type: Amazon Price
Kindle Edition: N/A
Hardbound: $172.34

Example #3: Fundamentals of Heat Transfer
Hardcover: 1048 pages
Publisher: Wiley; 7 edition (April 12, 2011)
Language: English

Type: Amazon Price
Kindle Edition: $121.00
Hardbound: $183.81

Example #4: System Dynamics, Palm III

Hardcover: 848 pages
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Science/Engineering/Math; 2 edition (January 26, 2009)
Language: Englis

Type: Amazon Price
Kindle Edition: $127.60
Hardbound: $165.64

Example #5: Thermodynamics: An Engineering Approach, 7th Edition, Cengel
Hardcover: 1024 pages
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Science/Engineering/Math; 7 edition (January 25, 2010)
Language: English

Type: Amazon Price
Kindle Edition: N/A
Hardbound: $166.31


It's amazing how these publications with completely different content all fall within the same price points relative to each other's digital copy or hardbound copy.

If you know squat about Mechanical Engineering you'll know that the price of textbooks have nearly quadrupled from the mid-90s as McGraw-Hill, Brooks-Cole, Prentice Hall, Taylor, John Wiley, etc., have merged with various other former publishing giants to form fewer and fewer technical publishing conglomerations.

Not a peep from the Department of Justice, irrespective of political party, and yet people are concerned with the cheap Best Selling book?

These textbooks are standard issue for all ABET accredited universities to become Mechanical Engineers.

If you think the Kindle Book is remotely the same quality as the Hardbound, then you'll believe anything you read. If you believe the cost of printing has quadrupled in 16 years then you really are high.

I imagine Amazon doesn't give a rat's ass about the price structuring of technical books and leaves it up to the publisher seeing as it's such a low bandwidth distribution market on the Kindle.

However, any publication that is selling hundreds of thousands and millions or more they will care about and will want a piece of the pie.

Apple setting it's typical 30% marketing/distribution ala the AppStore hasn't bothered a single person when it comes to Software, but suddenly it's a concern with Books, and your argument is that Apple requirement to maintain it's 30% and right to meet the same price point as it's digital distribution competitors is somehow Anti-Trust?

I'm not surprised on the part you bolded. Do you somehow think that a Publisher is somehow giving up it's product marketing rights for resellers to do as they see fit? They are nothing but a distribution channel.

Consumers aren't giving up money. If the DoJ thought they were they'd have been all over the Publishing industry for price extortion at the University level for such absurdly priced books that hold very little new information since the mid-90s, and yet charge nearly 4 times the going price of the mid-90s. Consumers have the final decision in whether or not they buy books from anyone by deciding whether to buy.

I'd love to see the Publishing Industry justify their price structures and if it takes including Apple in a lawsuit to do so, so be it. I actually see this as a means by the DoJ to satisfy the concern about how arbitrary or non-arbitrary technical and non-technical book publications are priced across the industry. Obviously, the format that is the most potentially profitable for the Publishing industry is digital. Unfortunately, there are no standards requiring a quality of product to be met by the Publishing industry for our dollars and I've seen some pathetically packaged digital copies from their hardbound equivalents in the .mobi or .epub format.

Apple brings a much higher standard to bear with the new EPub 3.x format and make a big splash about $15.00 technical books, and instead of cheering the pricing of these for being a fraction of their technical forebears we're bitching about Twighlight and other mass print fiction?

I don't see Apple being nothing more than the necessary distribution channel the DoJ needs to cite as a means to finally go after the Publishing conglomerates and look behind the curtain to determine if the Consumer is getting screwed or not.

I just read The Verge analysis:

http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/11/29...le-an-analysis

This goes to strengthen my perception of what is going on with this lawsuit.

I will add that Amazon is not innocent in this and don't be surprised if the DoJ expands their case against them as it's obvious the Publishing Industry most certainly will fill the DoJ with enough proof Amazon was strong arming them to levels keeping the DoJ for a long time.

:roll eyes: You got it all figured out, huh?

It couldn't possibly have anything to do with Amazon providing superior customer service and prices that their competitors couldn't match? Rather, it's all just a part of a conspiracy to take over the world one book at a time...

...but when Apple crushed it's competitors with the iPod, it was purely because of superior service and quality; nothing more.

The hypocrisy displayed on AI is astounding

Acknowledged. But is it true?

Your argument might seem plausible if you ignore both companies' history and culture. But, Apple, unlike Amazon, Walmart, Google and Microsoft has never been about taking over the world.

Nor does "customer service and quality" even enter into the picture in this issue. Maybe you didn't notice, but books don't typically require a lot of customer service. They are pretty simple to use. That's why they don't even come with stickers on the front that say, "Open book, begin reading". An e-book is nearly as easy to use, so not much "service" there.

Quality? Qaulity of what? The kindle? Seems like a piece of crap. The e-books? Not so much there either since either Publishers put them together or Amazon slaps them together in the case of public domain works.

No, it's always been all about price at Amazon. Price is their weapon to "take over the world", and price is the reason that so many other booksellers, small and large, who don't have Amazon's deep pockets, have been driven from the field. Price is the game that Amazon's competitors can't win at because, in a war of escalating losses, they run out of money long before Amazon would.

And the end result of all this, if Amazon and the DoJ have their way, is that Amazon will be the only bookseller left standing, and the customers and publishers will be at their mercy. So much for ignoring the long view. Remember, before there was competition in the e-reader market, Amazon sold Kindles for ridiculously high prices. There's no reason to expect them to adopt a different strategy if they are allowed, with the help of the DoJ, to corner the market on books.

Precisely.

You can strong arm a company all you want. You just can't collude with other companies to do so. I know that many people, especially in publishing, hate Amazon and the way it does business, much like people hate Wal-mart, but even Amazon's pricing practices are not clearly illegal.

The reason is, successful predatory pricing cases involve a specific, industry reliant product. Ebooks, since each is technically different, do not fall under this scope. This leaves you with a proof in category finding, as in you'd then have to show Amazon was losing money on its whole ebook product line. If Amazon was selling certain titles for a loss and making money on other titles for a total net profit, then the predatory pricing claim fails because that is a legal pricing strategy (else you'd never see black Friday sales that spark much interest).

Amazon combines its book sales in a media category on its quarterly reports, so it is unknown what they make on ebooks.

Considering we're currently something like $13 trillion in debt, it stands to reason.