An E-Book Argument: Are Fixed Prices Needed to Preserve Publishing?

The Department of Justice’s decision to file antitrust charges against Apple and five of the nation’s largest publishers for conspiring to raise e-book prices may do more harm than good if it dissolves the new agency pricing model for books those companies created. At least that’s the case being made by Apple’s defenders.

Though it has its problems, they contend, the model adopted by Apple — which requires retailers to charge book prices set by the publisher, while allowing them to keep 30 percent of sales revenue — may actually protect the long-term interests of everyone in the e-book value chain: Author and publisher, retailer and consumer. What Apple has been attempting to do with e-books is pretty much what it did with digital music: Standardize pricing. And while that effort might still irk recording industry executives, it’s near impossible to imagine the industry today without iTunes. And Apple clearly has similar hopes for iBooks and the publishing industry.