The price-fixing complaint that America's Department of Justice (doj) filed this week against Apple and five of the world's "Big Six" book publishers has a tri-umphalist tone, describing secret meetings in "upscale Manhattan restaurants". But it seems to take a rather narrow view of what is going on in the e-book industry. Until two years ago Amazon, the dominant player in the market thanks to its Kindle e-reader, kept publishers on the "wholesale model" for e-books. This let them set the wholesale price but let Amazon sell the books at a loss, making it harder for newer e-reader makers such as Barnes & Noble to challenge its near-monopoly.
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