E-book Rebates

[wayfriend]

For those of you who have thought that [some] e-books are too damn expensive, looks like the Attorneys General agree. If you bought any books on Amazon or Apple, you are probably going to get some money back.

I've already gotten an e-mail from Amazon titled "Kindle Book Credit".

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Amazon and Apple have informed some e-book buyers that they'll receive credits for future book purchases, as part of a recent settlement three major publishers signed to settle a price-fixing lawsuit.

Eligible Kindle e-book customers will receive credits ranging from 30 cents to $1.32 per book, Amazon estimated. Apple did not specify a range.

Customers who bought qualifying e-books between April 1, 2010 and May 21, 2012 are eligible for a refund, and won't need to do anything in order to receive their credits. If approved by the court, the credits can be used for future e-book purchases. Amazon customers may also use the credit for print books. [link]

It's darn too limited (and darn to cheap) if you ask me. But it is a settlement.

I wonder what this will mean for the price of e-books going forward?

[I'm Murrin]

Hard to say about the future of it. Part of the reason for the agency model was that it helped prevent Amazon from driving down prices in a way that furthered Amazon's growing monopoly on the ebook market and risked damaging the industry as Amazon came to control both the buying (from publishers) and selling (to customers) of ebooks. If they go back to traditional selling models we could see Amazon's grip on the market tightening and even more online sellers going out of business.

They need a new way to look at selling digital content, and they need it soon.

(There's an excellent article by Charles Stross on what Amazon's business strategy means to the book industry.)

[deer of the dawn]

Interesting article, although I don't have an answer for how Amazon "should" be doing business. I do know that musicians I know feel they are hurting because of file sharing; they now have to earn money the old-fashioned way: by playing gigs. I sure would love to be able to share Kindle books with my fam and friends, but it's so easy to just reproduce files (as with digital music files) that authors may suffer.

Still, I am grateful to Amazon for making it so that anyone on earth can buy my book, either paper or e-book version. So I'm not complaining too loudly. Business is business.