Article: Publishers Have Paid $166 Million to Settle E-book Claims

If you have not paid attention, then you likely don't know that there has been litigation over the consumer price of ebooks and whether there has been price fixing. In a Publishers Weekly article:

According to a recent filing, publishers have paid a total of $166,158,426 to settle state and consumer e-book price fixing charges, including an additional $3,909,000 to settle consumer claims in Minnesota.  (Full article here.)

Beyond the Book has a podcast on the verdict in the Apple lawsuit, which is worth listening to (13 minutes). The person interviewed in that podcast, Andrew Albanese, has written a book on this topic entitled The Battle of $9.99: How Apple, Amazon, and the Big Six Publishers Changed the E-Book Business Overnight, which is an ebook ($1.99).

These lawsuits have nothing to do with copyright; however, the price paid for an ebook does impact the copyright fees that might be paid to an author.