While Penguin, Macmillan, and Apple continue the e-book
pricing fight with the Department of Justice, Hachette, HarperCollins, and
Simon & Schuster have decided it’s better to pay $69 million now than risk
further damage to their reputation and possibly even higher fines that could result
from losing a court case.
The three agreed to give refunds in the form of account
credits or checks, ranging from 25 cents for each non-bestseller sold to $1.32
for books that appeared on The New York Times bestseller list from April 1,
2010-May 21, 2012. Just don’t expect your refund any time soon.
“Consumers aren’t going to see any payouts right now,”
Laura Hazard Owen, a reporter covering e-book publishing for paidContent, said
to The Boston Globe. “There’s still a lot of waiting ahead.”
The Globe article goes on to predict consumers could see e-book prices drop as much as 30%.
Amazon said it would lower prices when the initial settlement with the
Department of Justice was announced in April and other e-tailers will likely
follow suit to keep pace.
“When retailers or manufacturers conspire to set
prices, consumers lose,” said Edgar Dworsky, founder of consumer resource guide
ConsumerWorld.org. “So this is a good result.”
The three settling publishers also agreed to change the
pricing of their e-books, but that’s where things could get a little murky,
according to Billy Pidgeon, analyst at M2 Research.
“The devil is in the details,” he told the eCommerce Times.
“There’s a lot of issues with the price of digital media. There are
expectations that digital should be priced more cheaply as there are no
manufacturers. But this really hasn’t been the case.”
