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But for the Big Six publishers, this “defeat” has a surprising upside. They appear to have achieved much of what they wanted in the first place, which was not money but a more competitive e-book market and more control over the prices (and perceived value) of their books. Amazon has ceded 30 percent of the e-book market to competitors, and now buys most of the Big Six’s books on agency terms. The prices of popular Kindle titles, especially New York Times Best Sellers are either identical to those in the iBookstore, or at most a dollar cheaper. And as Albanese pointed out recently in Publishers Weekly, even the payouts to consumers mandated by the settlements have a silver lining: The “monies — nearly $175 million in total … will be issued almost entirely as credits to e-book consumers’ accounts, meaning those funds will flow back to the publishers, almost like a court-ordered promotion.” Sometimes you can’t lose for winning.
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What about the consumers? Did they "win" too?
