“In the mushrooming controversy over e-books, it’s easy to understand the publishers’ motives,” Jeff Roberts writes for paidContent. “But what about Apple? Did the company want to raise book prices in order to protect its iPad and blunt the rise of Amazon?”
“These questions will figure prominently in two regulatory investigations and in the more than two dozen class action suits that have been filed in the US since August,” Roberts writes. “Recall that, according to the accusations, big publishers colluded to impose ‘agency pricing’ on Amazon. This pricing model is a commission scheme that lets publishers control the minimum amount that retailers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble can charge consumers for e-books.
“The one problem with this grand conspiracy theory is that it overstates the importance of e-books in the larger consumer market… Apple’s business is driven by sales of devices not content. In other words, the e-book market is inconsequential to Apple if you consider that the company’s overall earnings could allow it to buy the entire publishing industry several times over.”
Read more in the full article here.