The Department of Justice "has a far better case against the publishers than Apple," says Dominick Armentano, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Hartford and author of Antitrust and Monopoly who's now affiliated with the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif. "If the CEOs of the various publishers got together in hotel rooms to discuss prices, they are sunk" and might as well settle, he says.

Pretty much only leaves MacMillan to have to fight, then.

"Kindle’s sales are suffering from Amazon’s lack of a color offering, at least that’s the read from a new e-reader report released this afternoon. The Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) Nook, with both color and black-and-white versions, now leads e-reader sales for the first time, according to research firm IDC.<br />
"Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) better hurry up and release its rumored color tablet. The buyers are there: e-reader sales grew by 105 percent year-on-year, IDC found. The company forecasts that the worldwide e-reader market will ship 16.2 million units in 2011—a 24 percent increase over 2010, and still a conservative estimate compared to recent Pew and eMarketer reports."<br />
<br />
IDC reckons 3.3m e-readers shipped in the first quarter of 2011. Amazon's tablet is on the way, don't worry.

"I do not know whether or to what extent piracy is responsible for my declining income. I suspect that the internet and the transition from print books to ebooks has more to do with it than piracy does. But I also suspect that piracy has a non-trivial impact, too.<br />
"But beyond the non-quantifiable financial impacts, I can report that, to me, the piracy of my books is profoundly discouraging. When my Ruby book came out in 2008 I was sad to discover that pirated copies were available within a week or so of the book's release. When my jQuery pocket reference came out earlier this year, I was shocked to discover that Google was giving the ebook download sites higher placement than reviews of the book. And now JavaScript: The Definitive Guide is out.. Google will suggest those illegal downloads to anyone who tries to research the book (see the screenshot). I've worked really hard on this book, and I've got to say that this just feels like a kick in the gut."