We may be about to witness the final chapter in the Apple e-book antitrust lawsuit. Publishers Weekly reports that the $400 million in refunds Apple has agreed to pay e-book consumers will be disbursed into customer accounts beginning June 21. There’s no word of what happened with “professional objector” John Bradley’s complaint that $400 million wasn’t enough, which was supposedly the last thing delaying that disbursement, but given that the disbursement is set to commence, apparently that objection has been handled.
The money will flow back into the accounts where the books were actually purchased, be they at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or Apple. I expect most of mine to come to B&N; not sure exactly what I’ll spend them on given that I don’t buy B&N e-books anymore. Maybe a Blu-ray or something. Season 3 of RWBY should be dropping soon, and the first couple seasons of that are what I spent the $20 or so I got from the previous round of refunds on. The amount refunded this time around will be $6.93 for each New York Times bestseller, and $1.57 each for other books.
This brings the total refund to consumers over the price-fixing affair to $566 million, counting the already-disbursed $166 million from settling publishers.
And that should finally put an end to the whole sordid affair once and for all.
Got credits from Amazon!
Apparently I bought one e-book from Amazon during the period in question, as I just got $1.57 in gift card balance added to my account. Woo, whatever will I spend that one?