ABA and Barnes & Noble File Motion To Comment on DOJ Case

By Dianna Dilworth 

The American Booksellers Association (ABA) and Barnes & Noble want to be heard in the Department of Justice’s lawsuit against Apple and five publishers.

The organizations filed a motion to become a “friend of the court” in proceedings.

In the joint filing, the two groups getting rid of the agency model will harm ABA member bookstores, Barnes & Noble, and authors, which they claim will hurt competition and ultimately harm consumers. Here is an excerpt from the filing: “The end loser of this unnecessary and burdensome regulatory approach will be the American public, who will experience higher overall average e-book and hardback prices and less choice.” If the court approves this request, the ABA and Barnes & Noble have until August 15th to file their brief.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has received 868 letters from concerned publishers, authors and readers about its civil lawsuit over eBook price-fixing. Barnes & Noble and the ABA have both commented on the case in this forum. The DOJ has archived all the commentary at this link.

Self-published authors filed their comments on the investigation earlier this month claiming that, “Amazon is creating, for the first time, real competition in publishing.”