Macmillan Reaches E-Book Price-Fixing Settlement

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Macmillan has become the last of five major publishers to settle claims it conspired with Apple to raise the retail price of e-books, the U.S. Justice Department announced this morning.

The DOJ has already reached settlements with Simon and Schuster, HarperCollins, Penguin and Hachette. The remaining defendant in the e-book antitrust case, Apple, is scheduled to go to trial in June.

“As a result of today’s settlement, Macmillan has agreed to immediately allow retailers to lower the prices consumer pay for Macmillan’s e-books,” Jamillia Ferris of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division said in a statement. “Just as consumers are already paying lower prices for the e-book versions of many of Hachette’s, HarperCollins, and Simon and Schuster’s new releases and best-sellers, we expect the prices of many of Macmillan’s e-books will also decline.”

The e-book price-fixing settlements are the result of a two-year investigation by the DOJ that uncovered an alleged conspiracy between the publishers and Apple to set prices for e-books and limit the discounts retailers could give. This caused consumers to pay “tens of millions” of dollars more for e-books and allegedly drove out competitors like Amazon’s Kindle e-reader, according to the Justice Department.

Terms of the proposed Macmillan e-book settlement were not immediately available, but PCMag.com reports it will prohibit the publisher from entering new agreements with similar e-book pricing restrictions until December 2014. The deal would also allow retailers to offer discounts on Macmillan e-books.

A number of class action lawsuits were also filed over the antitrust allegations, resulting in a consumer class action lawsuit settlement late last year. The case was In Re: Electronic Books Antitrust Litigation, Case No. 11-md-2293, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York.