DOJ sues Apple, Publishers over eBook prices

[Steerpike]

It's probably also important to point out (though I have less experience with this in regards to publishing specifically), that if you as an independent publisher sell something to Amazon for $3 an "e-copy" and Amazon sells it at the same price as big publisher books, it could lower your revenue because you sell fewer of them. Say, given that you lack reputation as a bigger author, people only will buy 100 of your books at $9.99, but if Amazon offered it $6.99 and you sold 500 at this lower price, your revenue is actually higher. But if you don't get a say in the price, then it can be shooting you in the foot.

Demand for books across all authors and publishers is not the same, so they shouldn't be priced the same.

That makes sense. I don't know that Amazon raises the price above the list price, but they may have the power to do so.

With respect to their royalty payments, they must at some point base it on the publisher's set price and not the discounted price, because that is sort of what started a lot of this in terms of Apple's agency model. Amazon was selling eBooks at a loss. If they based their royalty on the discounted price, they could never take a loss. So they must have been basing the royalty on the publisher's set price, and then discounting their sale price even below that, taking a loss to try to attract people to their platform. This sort of thing can be illegal (but isn't necessarily illegal).

I'd look at Amazon and Apple's policies separately, even though what one does influences the other. In other words, if Amazon was engaged in anti-competitive predatory pricing, that is an issue that may need to be address. It doesn't excuse Apple and the other publishers conspiring to keep prices higher, if in fact they did so.

It is an interesting saga.