Accepted Readers,
For the past few weeks I've been hearing about the e-book lawsuit against Apple and five book publishers. (Penguin, Macmillan, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, and HarperCollins) Months ago I started to receive emails from Barnes & Noble regarding the lawsuit that stated I may have been affected and may receive some cash back due to unethical increased sale prices. I didn't think too much of it until everyone in the online book community started to share the amounts they actually received back from various sites. I got back a mere $3.78 but hey, it's something right? I was shocked to receive anything considering the large amount of people that were involved in this whole mess. Normally I hear about lawsuits against big companies and how consumers may receive settlement payments but seldom do. I'm seriously floored by the fact this one actual worked out for consumers.
The whole E-Book Lawsuit is rather confusing to me. Someone shared link to a post that includes everything you need to know about the lawsuit. After I checked that out I finally think I understand what the whole thing was about. It appears that Apple and the 5 book publishing companies banded together to increase the prices of e-books. It seems they felt that Amazon was pricing their e-books at rock bottom price and they wanted to basically try to force them to raise prices as well. By doing this, they would have a better chance at becoming key profit makers in the e-book retailer market and knock Amazon out of the top. Is that the gist of this whole thing?
If that is the case, just wow. Nothing like a bit of greed and good old fashion bullying to get a job done. Great going Apple, Penguin, Macmillan, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, and HarperCollins; you should be ashamed of yourselves. I wouldn't be so upset by this if it meant that the authors receive more compensation but in most cases I doubt that they do. My fear now is how are the authors from the various companies going to be affected? I'm not sure if this is a good or bad thing for them. I truly hope that things work out in their favor and that they don't end up losing money as well because at the end of the day, they are the most important and deserve to be paid well for their work.
I want to hear your opinion on the e-book lawsuit. Do I understanding it correctly, if not what is the lawsuit about? What does this lawsuit mean to you and did you receive any money back?
I've always thought that many of the ebooks out there are over priced. Why pay over $7 for a book that's not even tangible? I think the bullying aspect is deplorable and I thin its reprehensible and irresponsible for a company to get together and try to "force" higher prices and selling their ebooks at a substantial increase. I don't believe the authors received extra monies from this increased pricing and that is probably the saddest part of this whole mess. I received $0.73 cents from Amazon and $7.10 from Barnes & Noble. I'm not sure how I feel about the settlement. It's great that I received some extra credit but at the same time, this shouldn't have happened in the first place.
ReplyDeleteOn another aspect, I think that many ebooks are outrageously priced. I get a little angry sometimes when I read a synopsis that I love and come to find out the ebook is almost $6 for 100 pages or less?!?! It's a slippery slope. I wonder how the money is allocated. I doubt the authors are getting the cut they deserve.