A top executive at Amazon has said that publishers gave the company an ultimatum in 2010 over e-book pricing.
Reuters reported that Russell Grandinetti, vice president for Kindle content at Amazon, gave the testimony on the third day of an antitrust trial in Manhattan federal court.
The news agency reported that at the trial, Grandinetti cited a particular offer from MacMillan in January 2010 and said the pubisher’s CEO Jon Sargent offered him a choice of either moving to the agency model or having to delay selling e-books until after a title’s hardcover had been on the market for seven months.
"I think I expressed how unpalatable the choice presented was," he said.
In 2012, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and 15 US states sued Apple and other major book publishers for alleged price-fixing of electronic books.
All five publishers involved in the lawsuit, Hachette Book, HarperCollins Publishers, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan Publishers, and Penguin Group, have settled with the DOJ.
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