Apple starts to shell out $400 million to customers in e-book settlement - CNET

E-book buyers affected by Apple's alleged price-fixing scheme will receive a bit of money starting Tuesday.

Millions of e-book purchasers will get either credits or checks for twice their losses, legal firm Hagens Berman, which helped litigate the class action lawsuit, said on Tuesday. Apple is on the hook for $400 million in damages plus an additional $50 million to pay the legal fees for Hagens Berman.

On an individual basis, each plaintiff in the suit will receive $1.57 in credit for most e-books they bought and a $6.93 credit for every e-book purchased that was on the New York Times bestseller list. Consumers who purchased e-books from Amazon, Baes & Noble, Kobo and Apple between April 1, 2010 and May 21, 2012 are eligible to receive credits deposited directly in their accounts or checks sent through the mail.

The e-book market opened up a new but potentially precarious arena for publishers, who were initially worried that sales of digital books would cut into those of traditional printed books. The Apple case also exemplified conces over how to price electronic books. Publishers became so obsessed with controlling the prices of e-books that several of them were willing to break antitrust laws.

In August 2011, a lawsuit filed by two individuals accused Apple of conspiring to fix e-book prices with five publishers: Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Holtzbrinck Publishers, Penguin Group and Simon & Schuster. The Department of Justice and the attoeys general of several states joined in with their own suits against the publishers.