Recently, a U.S. court approved the settlement of some major e-book publishers. The publishers had been accused of price fixing and it was accused the many publishers had lobbied to maintain unfairly high prices of the e-books they published. While most of them chose to settle, some have decided to fight on. Among those who had agreed to settle are HarperCollins and Hachette.
Within days of this settlement, the results are already manifest in the prices of e-books on Amazon. The price of many bestselling Kindle e-books have already declined, showing that we are on the way to more accessible and affordable digital content.
In some cases, the prices of the e-books have been slashed by $15. Before this settlement was reached, publishers had the right to set their own price for their e-books. However, due to this settlement, retailers get to have their way in determining the e-book prices now.
Amazon is quick in responding to the new policy and has been reducing prices in many of its e-books, some of them even Kindle bestsellers. Apple, on the other hand, had decided to continue its legal battle against the policy of allowing retailers to set the price. So for now, don’t expect any discounts on e-book prices on iBookstore.