I know it is a bit of old news but I was wondering so I looked into it:
It is a bit of a long article but very interesting in that it details the behind the scenes machinations that went into Apple entering the e-book market and how the publishers loved the fact that Apple took on Amazon.
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Yesterday, the US Department of Justice sued Apple and six publishers, alleging that they had conspired to fix prices. It all centres around the switch from a wholesale model of selling e-books from the publishers to retailers (such as Amazon) to using the agency model of selling books that Apple and the publishers agreed to adopt in early 2010. Some of the publishers have already settled with the DOJ, but other publishers and Apple have vowed to fight the allegations.
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To persuade one of the publishers to stay with the others and sign, Jobs sent an email to an executive of the parent company, saying they had two choices (i) accept the status quo (“Keep going with Amazon at $9.99″) or (ii) continue with a losing policy of delaying the release of electronic versions of new titles (“Hold back your books from Amazon”). “According to Jobs, the Apple deal offered the publishers a superior alternative path to the higher retail e-book prices they sought: “Throw in with Apple and see if we can all make a go of this to create a real mainstream e-books market at $12.99 and $14.99.”"
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Within four months of signing the agreement, “Macmillan presented Amazon a choice: adopt the agency mode or lose the ability to sell e-book versions of new hardcover titles for the first seven months of their release.” Amazon rejected it and briefly stopped selling all Macmillan books. But when it realised that all five publishers would sooner or later give them the same ultimatum, Amazon backed down.
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http://www.macstories.net/stories/un...se-publishers/