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据国外媒体报道，在美国加利福尼亚州北部的联邦地方法院提起的一起集体诉讼，指控苹果和美国五家出版商涉嫌对电子书进行价格垄断。这五家出版商包括阿歇特图书集团有限公司、哈珀柯林斯出版社、麦克米伦出版社、企鹅集团（美国）有限公司和西蒙与舒斯特公司。

诉讼状声称，苹果及五家出版商对他们电子书协调定价，不仅提高其零售价格，还同意对其价格变动范围进行限制，这实际上对电子书的定价采用“代理模式”（agency model）。诉讼状指控被告违反“谢尔曼法”第1条，即非法制订契约、联合或共谋，不合理地限制贸易。

这起集体诉讼案代表因苹果及五家出版商采用“代理模式”而遭受损失的电子书消费者，除非另有排除。

报道原文如下：

Apple, publishers ’sued for price fixing

SAN FRANCISCO — Five book publishers and computer manufacturer Apple have been sued for allegedly colluding to drive up the price of e-books, lawyers for the plaintiffs said.

The class-action suit, filed in the US District Court here, claims HarperCollins, Hachette, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster had worked with Apple to break Internet retailerAmazon.com?s discount pricing strategy and help Apple?s iPad compete with the Kindle marketed by Amazon.

According to the suit, the publishers believed that Amazon?s popular Kindle e-reader device and the company?s discounted pricing for e-books would increase the adoption of e-books, and feared Amazon?s discounted pricing structure would permanently set consumer expectations for lower prices, even for other e-reader devices.

“Fortunately for the publishers, they had a co-conspirator as terrified as they were over Amazon?s popularity and pricing structure, and that was Apple,” said Steve Berman, an attorney representing consumers.

“We intend to prove that Apple needed a way to neutralize Amazon?s Kindle before its popularity could challenge the upcoming introduction of the iPad, a device Apple intended to compete as an e-reader,” Berman added.

The complaint claims that the five publishing houses forced Amazon to abandon its discount pricing and adhere to a new agency model, in which publishers set prices and extinguished competition so that retailers such as Amazon could no longer offer lower prices for e-books.

If Amazon attempted to sell e-books below the publisher-set levels, the publishers would simply deny Amazon access to the title, the complaint claims.

The defendant publishers control 85 percent of the most popular fiction and non-fiction titles.

According to the lawsuit, Apple and publishers were concerned that Amazon?s $9.99 uniform pricing for bestsellers would create market pressures for other e-booksellers — including Apple — to do the same, cutting into profitability.

The named plaintiffs included Anthony Petru, a resident of Oakland, California, and Marcus Mathis, a resident of Natchez, Mississippi.

The law firm Hagens Berman, which posted the complaint on its website, announced the filing of the suit on August 9.

最近的一项调查显示 ，电子书阅读器期望以更低些的价格购买到电子书，同时他们倾向于购买更多。

调查发现，对于没有额外功能的电子书来说，人们可以接受的价格是对应纸质书价格的65% - 70%。

当然，调查再次印证了电子书的阅读者读的比纸书读者更多。

此项调查针对了美国、英国、德国的不同读者，发现了不通过家的有趣差异。

更多内容参看如下原文。

Publishers instead enjoyed a “varied degree of flexibility” as they searched for the pricing sweet-spot. The survey took Stieg Larsson’sThe Girl with the Dragon Tattoo as on example, with respondents suggesting an acceptable price range for the e-book version for UK buyers was between £2.97 and £5.19, even when the paperback version was selling at an average price of £3.89. The highest discount expected by UK e-book buyers in this case was 24%, compared with an 18% discount expected in the US.The study also found 73% of UK respondents thought e-books with enhanced features could cost more than the print version. However, the majority of those making this statement said it depended on the nature of those features, with translation tools and video or audio those features readers were prepared to pay extra for.

The survey showed US book readers currently spend a greater proportion of their book expenditure on e-books, higher than either their UK or German counterparts. Out of $21.09 spent monthly, $6.33 was spent on digital content, while in the UK out of £20.99 spent, £2.42 was spent on e-books. In Germany just €0.52 was spent on e-books out of a total book expenditure of €22.08. Regular e-book buyers spent more on books, with e-books taking an even greater proportion of that expenditure. In the UK e-book users spent £5.20 a month on e-books, out of a total book spend of £29.

The study also found in the UK and US even among non e-book users the majority, 61% and 74% respectively, plan to use e-books in the future, while e-book users plan to use e-books “significantly more often”. Fiction, non-fiction, and travel guides were the most popular genres among UK and US e-book readers.

Predictably the survey found Amazon was the preferred destination for e-book buyers, chosen by 71% in the US and 67% in the UK. Apple’s iBookstore was the second choice.

今天要推荐的是iPhone、iTouch上的一款新的epub电子书阅读软件：亿万书库，英文名是Ouiivo。

这款软件的开发商来自香港，目前提供了英文、简体中文、繁体中文版本，支持了ePub格式和内置OPDS在线书库目录的功能。

在格式支持上，虽然只有ePub，但是通过内置的书仓网（http://www.shucang.com）的转换功能，实际上Ouiivo、亿万书库能够支持到umd、txt、doc、chm等多种常用电子书格式。

上图是打开内置的书仓书库目录的截图，你可以注意到有些书的后面有个圆圈，那个代表正在下载以及正在下载的进度，能够让你了解下载了多少。这点上和Stanza相比，贴心不少。

与Stanza的页面呈现不同，这个版本的亿万书库采用的是上下滚动的方式，也就是一个章节全部显示出来，阅读的时候需要你手工上下移动。这对于不习惯页面的人来说是个好消息，不过对于喜欢页面的人来说，没有了Stanza使用中翻页的那种体验。

总体来说，在阅读和使用上，亿万书库都还比较流畅，定制功能中能够让你定义书的背景色、字体等，搜索功能的效果也不错。

中文读者们不妨下载尝试：

http://itunes.apple.com/cn/app/id367264662。

Amazon 继推出 kindle for iphone之后，于昨天推出了 kindle for pc桌面端阅读软件。至此，Amazon基本完成了手持阅读器、Iphone、桌面端的布局，接下去，相信会在其他智能手机、移动互联网设备上继续开疆拓土。

下载安装并完成登录后，就可以进行和amazon上的同步了，可以把之前买过的书都同步到本地来阅读；与此同时，在amazon上你的帐号页面，多了一个kindle for pc的项目，以后买书的时候，你就可以选择这个了。

对于我来说，最关心的是这个kindle for pc是否能够阅读非amazon的书，是否能够支持中文，经过测试，答案得到了肯定，也就是说，书仓的用户们，多了一个桌面阅读软件的选择。

安装完kindle for pc之后，会和mobi文件格式进行关联，当你从书仓或者其他地方下载mobi格式的时候，会提示是否用kindle for pc打开。不过对于中文书来说有些小小的缺憾，就是如果下载的是中文文件名的话，kindle for pc不认，遗憾的是书仓提供下载的都是中文文件名，这就需要下载后更改下文件名字了。

改完文件名，双击你要看的书，自动进入到kindle for pc里面了。

这是主管理界面，采用最近阅读、标题和作者来排序，后两者的数据来自书中的元描述，看看，作书的时候，加上这些描述还是很有用的。

下面这个是阅读界面，右侧的书签/笔记部分可以选择隐藏或者显示。字体大小，每行字数都可以更改。

这张是目录的，可以通过目录、页数等方式直接跳转到指定的内容。

有了kindle for pc后，结合kindle、书仓网，当然还有amazon自己，相信能给你带来非常棒的阅读体验了。

内容：DNAML Releases PDF to ePub Conversion Software Next Steps for Google Books: More E-book Conversion and Retail?丹-布朗时代：出版社遭遇危机 21世纪阅读：最畅销就是最垃圾 Kindle开启云书柜 手机报：革命还是被革命

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内容：微软创办人比尔‧盖兹说：它将改变全世界的阅读方式。不过1公分薄，它却能让美国13万家出版社消失、国内外科技大厂纷纷加入战场、Google誓言做全世界最大图书馆；这场知识阅读革命，已经到家门口，你准备好了吗？电子书，不会完全取代纸本书，但这不仅是场阅读革命，更是巨大的知识革命

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内容：本周热点是Googlebook引起的法律纷争。支持者聲援：Google Books可拉近數位落差 Google Books爭議事件完全瞭解 Amazon正式要求法院拒絕Google書籍和解協議 德國政府出面反對Google 圖書協議 亦正亦邪 谷歌数字图书馆惨遭围攻 2009年电子纸市场规模10亿美元 年增长49% 让电纸书来得更猛烈些吧 全球四大主要電子紙技術供應商，台灣掌兩廠 Would You Pay More Than $99 For an eReader? 商务印书馆:难念的”数字出版经” 法出版商：電子書將終結實體書

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内容：互联网：一种免费经济学 传媒业的自我救赎 3G机遇催生手机出版物春天 手机出版兵临城下 華文電子書市場沒想像的容易 丹·布朗：纸书时代的终结者？

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今天的消息，GoogleBook在其blog上宣布，所有过了版权保护期的书都提供了epub格式，供大家下载阅读。

早前，Google和Sony合作，为sony的阅读器用户提供epub下载，没想到时隔这么短时间，google就对公众开放了。与此对照的另一个有趣消息是不久前sony宣布完全转向epub格式。

有这两家的力推，epub格式不火都难。

刚才尝试下载了一本，在ADE软件中正常阅读，而在fbreader和cabrie阅读软件中，都无法显示出目录。

把它上传书仓网（shucang.com），也都OK，无论是电脑在线，还是手机在线，都能正常阅读，并且，书仓还将它转换为chm\mobi\pdf\doc等格式，这样其他阅读器/软件的用户也可以享受到海量图书的乐趣了。

内容：新闻出版总署与上海市合作联席会议举行 数字出版专馆首次亮相上海书展 淘书，下周来南国书香节 上海的网络视听出版约占国内市场70%份额网络游戏出版约占50% iPhone 应用能否为传媒带来利润？ 亚马逊或将计划在澳大利亚成立分公司，并推出支持GSM通信标准的Kindle电子阅读器

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