Amazon and Other Book Retailers Issuing Refunds in E-Book Publisher Settlement

Amazon today notified customers they are eligible for a refund for books they purchased through the Kindle book store. The refunds were paid by publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Penguin as part of a settlement agreement in ebook price-fixing lawsuits filed by State Attorney Generals and other class-action plaintiffs.

Amazon issued the settlement refund in the form of a Kindle book store credit that is automatically applied to a customer's Amazon account. The credit is valid for one year and must be redeemed before 03/31/2015.

Good news! You are entitled to a credit of $27.55 for some of your past Kindle book purchases. The credit results from legal settlements reached with publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Penguin in antitrust lawsuits filed by State Attorneys General and Class Plaintiffs about the price of eBooks.

You don't have to do anything to claim your credit, we have already added your credit to your Amazon account. We will automatically apply your available credit to your next purchase of a Kindle book or print book sold by Amazon.com, regardless of publisher. The credit applied to your purchase will appear in your order summary. If your account does not reflect this credit, please contact Amazon's customer service.

For more information about the settlements, please visit www.amazon.com/ebooksettlements

Your credit is valid for one year and will expire after 03/31/2015. If you have not used your credit, we will send you another email 90 days before it expires to remind you that it is still available.

Thanks for being a Kindle customer.

The Amazon Kindle Team

Select book sellers like Barnes & Noble and Sony are expected to begin issuing similar credits today, with postcard checks from other booksellers being sent via mail to consumers starting March 27, 2014. You can find information on book retailers and their refund payment methods on the e-book settlement web site.

Apple also was included in the antitrust lawsuits, but refused to settle. After being found guilty in federal court of conspiring to artificially inflate e-book prices, Apple was barred from entering into anticompetitive deals with content providers and must submit to court-appointed compliance monitoring. The Cupertino company also could owe as much as $500 million in damages, which are yet to be assessed.

Apple recently appealed the verdict, calling the plan a "draconian and punitive intrusion into Apple's business, wildly out of proportion to any adjudicated wrongdoing or potential harm."