Not a pretty picture: Borders was likely the biggest casualty to date in the ongoing book wars. Other stores will suffer same fate if they can't figure out how to compete in digital era.
(Credit: Greg Sandoval/CNET)
commentary It's not wrong for retailers to discount books and losing market share to a competitor is no excuse to fix prices or cheat consumers.
That's the message U.S. District Court Judge Denise Cote sent yesterday to Apple and the country's top book publishers, as well as e-book retailers.
In April, the Department of Justice filed suit and accused five of the country's largest book publishers of conspiring with Apple to raise e-book prices. Soon after, the DOJ reached a settlement agreement with three of the accused publishers. For months, the book industry attacked the settlement but Cote yesterday approved the agreement.
Of the five accused publishers, News Corp.'s HarperCollins Publishers, Lagardere SCA's Hachette Book Group, and Simon & Schuster (owned by CBS, which publishes CNET), settled. The publishers who settled agreed to allow e-book merchants to discount prices for a minimum of two years. They also agreed to revoke a contract with Apple in which they guaranteed that iBookstore would offer the lowest or at least matched the lowest price found anywhere on hardcover new releases.
Founded in 1971, Borders last year w... [Read more]
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