Amazon Faces Class-Action Lawsuit Over Inflated Ebook Pricing

Amazon was slapped with a class-action lawsuit on Thursday accusing the e-commerce large of inflating the costs of ebooks in collusion with some publishers.

The lawsuit alleges that Amazon and the 5 largest US publishers, collectively known as the “Big Five,” agreed to cost restraints that trigger customers to overpay for ebooks bought from them via a retail platform apart from Amazon. The “Big Five” contains Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin-Random House, and Simon & Schuster.

The lawsuit comes a day after Connecticut stated it was investigating Amazon for potential anti-competitive behaviour in its enterprise promoting digital books.

Amazon declined to remark.

About 90 p.c of ebooks are offered via Amazon, the most important US ebooks vendor, the lawsuit claimed.

The case was introduced by legislation agency Hagens Berman and filed in US District Court for the Southern District of New York. The grievance stated that Amazon's co-conspirators have been concerned in an analogous litigation earlier than. In 2011, Hagens Berman filed an analogous lawsuit in opposition to Apple and the “Big Five” over book costs.

Under a scheme of fixing book costs at artificially excessive ranges in response to the risk to their revenue posed by retailer's discounted pricing of ebooks, the publishers entered into agreements with Apple whereby the publishers all switched from a wholesale mannequin to an company mannequin.

The profitable class motion resulted in Apple settling for $400 million (roughly Rs. 2,900 crores) and the publishers settling for much more.

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