Battle between some publishers and US government for the freedom to deliver e books

There’s a fair battle developing between Apple and the US government over e books. Basically, the US government, in a document published by its Department of Justice, is adopting the view that e book publishing is a selfish activity which operates against the public interest – not my words.  The conflict began in April. At that time, the US government accused Apple of conspiring to fix the price of e books using what has been called an ‘agency model’, along with a handful of other large publishers such as Harper Collins and Penguin Books, so as to compete more effectively with Amazon, which company now dominates this field. The stimulus was the intention of Amazon, apparently, to set the price of all its e books at £6.43, equivalent to $9.99. The plan would have been for Apple – at the same time as launching the iPad and the iBookstore – to set up agreements then permitting the publisher to take a cut of, say, 30% from sales at this price.

It appears that so far Macmillan, and Apple and Pearson – both owned by the global publishing corporation Pearson – are still opposed to the settlement imposed by the US government, whereas Simon and Schuster, Hachette and HarperCollins have accepted the government’s conditions.

The case Apple proposes is that by going into e book publishing it has represented enhanced innovative practice which benefits people who write and read the e books. This amounts to saying that the agency model proposed by Apple has the advantages of diversifying the range of possible platforms (using tablets, presumably, since these seem to date to be the preferred mode of delivering e books) reflecting the benefits of enhanced competition, presumably in a variety of prices of different means of delivery which in the longer term will enhance the quality, interests and products of publishing itself as an industry.