• Koller Auctions
    Books & Autographs
    20 March 2024
    Koller, Mar. 20: DADA - Der Zeltweg. Redaktion: Flake, Serner, Tzara. Zürich, 1919. CHF 5,000 – 8,000
    Koller, Mar. 20: Jespers, Floris - Peeters, Jan. Kinderlust. Antwerpen, J. F. Bogaerts & R. R. Dodson, [1923]. CHF 2,000 – 3,000
    Koller, Mar. 20: FARBENLEHRE - Chevreul, M. E. De la Loi du contraste simultané des couleurs et de l'assortiment des objets colorés. Paris, 1839. CHF 4,000 – 5,000
    Koller, Mar. 20: BOTANIK - Schrank, Franz de Paula von. Flora Monacensis, seu plantae sponte circa Monachium nascentes. München, 1811-1818. CHF 20,000 – 30,000
    Koller, Mar. 20: French Bible manuscript. Latin manuscript on parchment. With 81 illuminated, ornamental and figurative initials. Paris, c. 1250. CHF 90,000 – 120,000
    Koller Auctions
    Books & Autographs
    20 March 2024
    Koller, Mar. 20: Gradual for the use of a Dominican convent. Latin manuscript on parchment, with Flemish rubrics in black and red. Mecheln (?), c. 1520. CHF 25,000 – 40,000
    Koller, Mar. 20: Calendar. French manuscript on parchment. With 12 large colored thorn leaf initials on a gold background. Paris, c. 1380/1390. CHF 40,000 – 60,000
    Koller, Mar. 20: Freud, Sigmund. Collection of 23 handwritten letters to Alphonse Maeder in Zurich. In addition to 4 letter drafts from Maeder to Freud. 2 February 1910 - 21 September 1913. CHF 50,000 – 80,000
    Koller, Mar. 20: Jung, Carl Gustav. Collection of 26 autograph and 3 typescript letters and a postcard to Alphonse Maeder. 1911-1918. CHF 20,000 – 30,000
    Koller, Mar. 20: Nietzsche, Friedrich, philosopher. Handwritten letter signed to Richard Wagner. Basel, September 27, 1876. CHF 20,000 to 30,000
  • 19th Century Shop
    Catalogue 198 just published
    19th Century Shop. Darwin and Wallace, first printing of the first paper on natural selection
    19th Century Shop. Shakespeare’s Poems, first collected edition
    19th Century Shop. Walt Whitman portrait inscribed with a Leaves of Grass poem
    19th Century Shop. Major Elizabeth Barrett Browning manuscript notebook
    19th Century Shop. Spock's Baby Book, original MS
    19th Century Shop. Cellarius, Harmonia Macrocosmica, the great celestial atlas
  • Forum Auctions
    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: [Langland (William)]. The vision of Pierce Plowman, nowe the seconde time imprinted..., Roberte Crowley, 1550. £8,000 to £10,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: [Shakespeare (William)]. [Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies], second folio edition, [by Tho.Cotes, for Robert Allot], [1632]. £30,000 to £40,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Bible, Czech Biblia Bohemica, first complete Bible printed in the Czech vernacular, Prague, August 1488. £30,000 to £40,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: Shabthai Tzvi.- Collection of four printed and illustrated broadsides detailing the appearance, rise and fall of the false messiah, Shabthai Tzvi, Augsburg, 1666-67. £40,000 to £60,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Leaf from the Beauvais Missal, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on parchment, [Northern France (perhaps Beauvais or Amiens)], [fourteenth century (c.1310)]. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Aubrey (John). [Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme], manuscript in English, Latin and Greek, [c. 1693]. £30,000 to £50,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: Byron (George Gordon Noel, Lord). Poems on Various Occasions, first edition, Harriet Maltby's copy, Newark, Printed by S. & J. Ridge, 1807. £30,000 to £40,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Tolkien (J.R.R.) The Hobbit, first edition, second impression with dust-jacket, 1937 [but 1938]. £7,000 to £10,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Blake (William).- Thornton (Robert John). The Pastorals of Virgil, 2 vol., engraved plates by William Blake, 1821. £8,000 to £12,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: America.- Mount (William J.) & Thomas Page. The English Pilot…, [bound with] The Fourth Book, describing The West Indies Navigation from Hudson's-Bay to the River Amazones, 1721. £20,000 to £30,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Oldfield (Henry Ambrose), Rajman Singh Chitrakar & others. An album of 160 photographs and 13 original artworks, (1833-1919), [c. 1850s-1880s]. £20,000 to £30,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Audubon (John James) [and William MacGillivray]. Ornithological Biography…, 5 vol., first edition, presentation copy inscribed by Audubon, Edinburgh, 1831-49 [i.e. 1831-39]. £10,000 to £15,000.

Rare Book Monthly

Articles - August - 2013 Issue

Apple Convicted for Role in E-Books Price Fixing Scheme

The closing slide from Apple's unsuccessful presentation in court.

The last man standing has fallen in the government's lawsuit over price fixing of electronic books. Unlike its partners in “crime,” Apple did not go down without a fight. Indeed, Apple says it will try to rise off the mat to go another round. For the moment anyway, the bell has rung and the U.S. Department of Justice has swept through each round and the judge has awarded it a lopsided decision.

The government's suit alleged that Apple conspired with five book publishers to thwart competition, resulting in higher prices of e-books for the book-buying public. Here are the basics of what happened. A few years ago, when e-books were new, Amazon began to offer them for sale. Amazon likes to dominate a market, and is willing to forgo current profits to become the market leader. So, Amazon bought the publishers' e-books, but sold them at cutthroat prices. Their prices left little room for profit. Some were sold at a loss. It didn't matter to Amazon. They were not out to make a dollar today. They were out to become the runaway leader in selling electronic books, the one place customers would turn when they wanted one. Profits could come later.

You might think the publishers would be laughing all the way to the bank. Cheap prices encourage more sales, but those discounts came at Amazon's expense. The publishers were getting their full price. Nevertheless, if you thought that, you were wrong. The publishers were not pleased at all. They wanted e-books to reach new customers, not the old print book buyers. The publishers make more money on a printed book than an e-book. If Amazon's super low prices ended up stealing away print book buyers, publishers feared their margins per book would fall. They wanted e-books to be an alternative method for people to buy books, not a cheaper one. They wanted Amazon to raise prices. Amazon, on the other hand, wanted to keep their prices low to discourage competition on the retail side.

When one of the publishers tried to force Amazon to sell at higher prices. Amazon threatened to stop buying their books entirely. The publisher relented. Amazon had become too powerful to take on alone.

Into this milieu stepped Apple, the giant computer, smart phone, i-this and i-that maker. Apple wanted to offer e-books for sale, but unlike Amazon, Apple does not want to wait to make profits. It wants to make them now. There was no way Apple could be competitive with Amazon on price and make money. The firm relayed its distress to the publishers. A different pricing model, however, would cure this problem. If the publishers switched to so-called agency pricing, where the publisher dictates the retail price rather than the retailer, Apple would be able to compete on price. If Apple could compete on price, it meant prices would go up, and customers would be less likely to buy cheaper e-books instead of higher priced printed books. This idea looked good to both the publishers and Apple.

Exactly what happened next was the subject of dispute. Apple held negotiations with the various publishers. The publishers switched to agency pricing. When the first publisher switched, Amazon said it would stop buying their books. When they all did, Amazon could no longer afford to pull the plug. They would have lost access to too many titles, meaning e-book buyers would turn to other retailers to buy their books. That was exactly what Amazon wanted to avoid. It had no choice but to give in and agree to sell e-books at the higher “agency” prices.

Now, there is nothing illegal about publishers employing an agency model, even if it does eliminate price competition among retailers. That is not considered price fixing. However, when several publishers get together and all agree to adopt agency pricing, that is considered illegal collusion and price fixing. That is what the Department of Justice alleged. And the instigator, or “ringmaster” to use their term, they said was none other than Apple.

The Department of Justice claimed that Apple was managing a conspiracy whereby each of the publishers would switch to agency pricing. And so they all did, at the same time, change to agency pricing. Apple was able to sell their books, and Amazon was forced to raise the price of books they sold, often from $9.99 to $12.99 or $14.99.

Apple responded that all they did was negotiate with individual publishers for terms that they felt would allow them to sell their books. They were in no way encouraging a concerted action on the publishers' part, said Apple. Judge Denise Cote looked at the evidence, including comments attributed to late Apple CEO Steve Jobs in his biography, and concluded otherwise.

In her decision, Judge Cote wrote that the publishers were already seeking a way to collectively raise prices, as they knew Amazon could effectively retaliate against the first who tried. When approached by Apple, all parties immediately recognized a common interest in having higher prices. “Apple seized the moment and brilliantly played its hand,” she wrote. “With a full appreciation of each other’s interests, Apple and the Publisher Defendants agreed to work together to eliminate retail price competition in the e-book market and raise the price of e-books above $9.99.” Guilty as charged.

The publishers long ago threw in the towel and agreed to settle with the Department of Justice. They were assessed hefty fines, but the damage could have been much worse if they fought and lost. One reluctantly settling publisher noted the potential damages in a loss would put them out of business, too great a risk to continue the fight. By continuing to fight, Apple risks a large financial judgment, but with $150 billion in the bank, even the worst outcome will not materially harm their business. As a result, Apple immediately announced that it would fight on. They will take the case to the Court of Appeals, and if this is unsuccessful, they will have one more option – take it all the way to the Supreme Court. Most legal commentators do not believe the odds are in Apple's favor, but some believe they have a shot. The problem for Apple is cases are generally overturned because a higher court believes the lower court did not correctly apply the law. In this case, the dispute is not so much over the law as it is over the facts – did or did not Apple act as a “ringmaster” who led the five publishers to all take some action? Hoping a higher court will reach a different factual conclusion from the same evidence is a tougher challenge, but Apple is a company with the resources to take on even the toughest challenge.

Unrelated Addendum for those who read this far: Admittedly, this has nothing to do with books, but if you think Apple has legal problems with e-books, that is nothing compared to a lawsuit initiated by a buyer of an Apple computer from Tennessee. This customer has demanded that Apple sell its computers in “safe mode,” preset to block pornographic sites, along with paying him something in excess of $75,000. After a thorough description of the horrors pornography has inflicted on society, he tells his own sad tale. One day when he was trying to find Facebook, he accidentally hit two wrong keys. Here is what he typed, leaving the erroneous keys blank: f_c_book. We will leave it to your imagination what letters he accidentally typed besides the “a” and “e” of “face” in those two blanks. I can say that I checked out my keyboard, and discovered “a” is nowhere near “u,” and “e” is nowhere near “k.”

After that, it was all downhill. The complaint states, “The Plaintiff began to prefer the cyber beauties over his wife, which caused his marriage to fail. His wife abducted his son and disappeared, which was a subsequent consequence of Apple's decision to sell its computers not in 'safe mode.'” The complaint continues that the plaintiff, a member of the always chaste music profession, had previously “never seen pornographic images.”

The Tennessean goes on to explain, “When the Plaintiff bought his Apple Mac Book, no one at apple's store warned him that looking at pornographic images and videos could cause addictions to include arousal addiction or that the device could be the gateway to accessing content that could cause a rewiring of his brain, which lead to the demise of his family, unemployment, and unwanted changes in life style.” On this point I am in his corner. I have been to Apple stores and the salesmen absolutely do not make this warning. I must also agree with his claim that Apple knows full well “that the internet is loaded with porn.”

He later claims that the pictures “caused a release of dopamines and endorphins” which addicted him. On this one I will pass – not all that up on the science stuff. Neither would I pose as a legal expert. Nevertheless, I think this will be a tough case for the plaintiff to win. Sometimes you just have to take responsibility for your own behavior. You lose some but you win some, and on this case, I forecast an Apple victory in court.

Rare Book Monthly

  • Sotheby’s
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    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Winston Churchill. The Second World War. Set of First-Edition Volumes. 6,000 USD
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: A.A. Milne, Ernest H. Shepard. A Collection of The Pooh Books. Set of First-Editions. 18,600 USD
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  • Forum Auctions
    Colour Plate Books from the Library of Norman Bobins
    Part 2
    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Alken (Henry). Sporting Notions, first edition, T.McLean, 1832-33. £800 to £1,200.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Bardi (Lorenzo). Nuova Raccolta delle piu interessanti Vedute della Citta di Firenze…, Florence, Lorenzo Bardi, [c.1840]. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Crawfurd (John). Journal of an Embassy from the Governor-General of India to the Court of Ava..., first edition, 1829. £1,000 to £1,500.
    Forum Auctions
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    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Dawe (George, engraver). The Life of a Nobleman, first edition, Geo. Henderson, [c.1825]. £1,000 to £1,500.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: [Doyle (John)], "H.B.". Political Sketches &c., 10 vol. including The Descriptive Key to H.B., Thomas McLean, [1829-51]. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Eben (Adolphus Christian Frederick, Baron von) and Nicolaus Heideloff. Modèles de l'Uniforme Militaire Adopté dans l'Armée Royale de Suède, Rudolph Ackerman, 1808. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum Auctions
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    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Geissler (J.G.G.) and Friedrich Hempel. Mahlerische Darstellungen der Sitten, Gebrauche und Lustbarkeiten bey den Russischen, Tartarischen…, 4 parts in 1, Leipzig and Paris, [1804]. £1,000 to £1,500.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Hunt (Charles). Portraits of Winning Horses...of the Derby, Oaks, & St. Leger, from the Year 1842 to 1849…, Rock Brothers & Payne, 1849. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Kunike (Adolf Friedrich). Zwey hundert und sechzig Donau-Ansichten nach dem Laufe des Donaustromes…, Vienna, Leopold Grund, 1826. £3,000 to £5,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Colour Plate Books from the Library of Norman Bobins
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    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Lasinio (Carlo). [Matrimony], Florence, 1790. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Reinhardt (Joseph). A Collection of Swiss Costumes, in Miniature, second English edition, James Goodwin, [1828]. £800 to £1,200.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Wengen (Gottfried Durst von). Die Öffentliche Maskerade Bamberg am Fastnachts-Montage 1833…, Bamberg, [1833]. £2,000 to £3,000.

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