Justice Dept case drops eBook prices

An analyst with a website based in Virginia says eBook prices dropped this holiday season as a result of a U.S. Justice Department case against publishers. Blake Bos, an analyst with The Motley Fool, said his study found the prices of eBooks went down "a dollar or two" to between $9.06 and $11.79 after several publishers settled with the Justice Department in a case accusing the publishers of colluding to keep their prices high, Politico reported Tuesday. The Justice Department is in talks with eBook publishers Apple and Macmillan. Bos said the settlements allow publishers to put limits on how low the prices can be set. "Amazon can't come in and just undercut everything. The new contract is they can only cut prices books by 30 percent as a whole, so they can't sell all books at a loss," Bos said. "They can sell one book for a loss, but they would have to raise prices on other books, so no one company can have the lowest price on all books."