If there is no price fixing, then why (granted, my personal sample size is less than 50 eBooks) is every book I have purchased for my iPad (iBooks and Kindle software loaded) priced at EXACTLY the same price?
I mean, if the book is available through Apple and Amazon, they are priced absolutely identical, as in “to the penny”.
I thought the publisher’s set the price?
You see what happened was Amazon was selling ebooks at a loss to build and strengthen its monopoly and create a false sense of pricing in the ebook market.
Publishers didn't like this and Barnes & Noble and Apple, with competing ebook readers couldn't compete with monopolist Amazon's phony pricing schemes.
Once the agency model of pricing came in, where the publisher sets the minimum price, suddenly Barnes & Noble's Nook took 20% of the reader market and Apple's iBooks began to climb in share as well.
Having already laid waste to brick-and-mortar bookstores of all shapes and sizes, ebook monopolist Amazon's response was to complain to Holder and the DOJ spurring this asinine action.
Obama's DOJ are saying Amazon's predatory pricing scheme was good for consumers because they paid less for ebooks on Amazon Kindle than they do now with more choices and healthy competition in ebook readers and more opportunities for publishers and authors.
Apple's interest here was to ensure its iBooks users would not be subsidizing Amazon's Kindle ebook below market pricing scheme. They wanted most favored nation pricing from the publishers for access to their customers. Prices look the same because everyone is selling at the various publisher's minimum pricing point.
Moving to a perfectly legal agency model by publishers was how Amazon's monopoly grip on the ebook market was broken and how competitors like Apple and Barnes & Noble could compete in the reader market space.