I think it is pretty clear cut case of price fixing which is why most publishers have settled. The
DOJ has emails documenting an agreement among the publishers and Apple to all switch to an agency model and drive the price up to consumers. Now considering that in general physical book are sold at wholesale price with retailer being free to mark up the books (in the case of Amazon a small markup) this is mighty suspicious.
Most of the time in past anti trust lawsuits by the government against tech companies it is hard to figure out how the consumer is harmed, for example Google provides search and bunch of other services for free and while it is actions maybe unfair to competitors it isn't like they hurt me.
In contrast this collusion to raise ebook prices had direct impact on consumers. One of the reason I signed up for the Kindle was the promise of most ebooks would be $9.99. Amazon did their part since often the publisher would price their wholesale price of ebooks ( 40-50% of suggested retail) at the same price as the hardback so Amazon would buy the at $8 wholesale and sell them for $9.99. In some case Amazon was selling at cost and most cases they could make more money selling a hardback version compared to an ebook. But Amazon want to build the market for Kindle books so they accepted lower margins.
Then along comes Apple and works with publishers and they decide they will set the price of ebooks to be a a $1 or two below hardback prices. They switch to agency model which gives the e-tailer no control over pricing and instead gives them a fixed 30% profit of the price of an ebook.
By working collectively they publishers force Amazon to abandon the wholesale model and switch to an agency model. Suddenly I and other consumers instead of finding that we are paying $9.99 (which is typically a $1 or two higher than the paperback version) for a Kindle book now find that we are paying $12.99 (almost all of the NY Bestseller Kindler books are at this price) and many are at $14.99.
This leads to absurd situation such as the
bestseller where the Kindle cost $14.99 and the hardback cost $13.99.
A year or so ago when I saw an ebook that I wanted to that cost more than $9.99 I wrote an email to the publisher and said I'd like to purchase this books but I won't pay more than $9.99 for an electronic book. So instead I'll get it at the library or wait until the paperbook. I generally got form letter response. However, I threw in the towel at Xmas when making my Xmas list wish for my family cause it is clear that find best selling ebooks for $9.99 is a lost cause. Although I still buy plenty of ebooks at $2 or $3.
Fundamentally the cost of publishing an ebook (including printing, distribution, shipping, and dealing with returns and overstocking) is probably $4-$5 less than a physical book. Obviously printers and shippers (UPS, USPS) are hurt by this but who should benefit? It seems to me in a true free market that everybody authors, etailers,and publisher should make a bit more money from the cost savings and the consumers should benefit from lower prices. Instead we see the publishers and the etailers get virtually all of the savings due to collusion.
