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.
Sorry, that is collusion. If we do that in my business (and it WAS done in the past) to drive out a competitor, it is illegal. Such games are very common, but to hold a press conference about it was stupid. A friend of mine speculates that one of the publishing house's did it because they were not comfortable with the deal.
One of the publishers, I forgot which one, went to the agency model but didn't sign the agreement with Apple. They are OK.
Also, the publishing world is very concerned about e publishing. They have lost control of being the gate keepers to content, and pricing. If you go to Amazon or other sites, you will find a lot of indie books that you would NEVER see if the traditional model was in place. One of my favorite authors, who is doing quite well now, was rejected for his novels because he dealt with religious themes that didn't portray Christianity as messed up. Now, Amazon does take a loss on some books. They have sales, and a rather interesting thing called the Amazon Prime Lending library. Guess what, I buy dead tree books from B&N all the time on the sale rack. They were listed originally at $15 to $29, and I pick them up for $5. Barnes and Noble took a loss on that book, and on the storage costs. That is part of doing business.