On the Dinner Menu: Fishy Discussions about “$9.99 Problem”

Something Fishy Served Up at Picholine?

Is this a joke?

A Melville House posting by Kelly Burdick has allegedly unearthed email exchanges among executives of some Big Six Publishers plus Steve Jobs of Apple setting up a dinner to discuss “the $9.99 problem”. The email thread comes from “From deep inside the files of the Justice Department”, says Melville, and if verified will explain why the Department of Justice pressed its collusion case – and why at least three of the accused settled.

Clearly, the interchanges didn’t pass DoJ’s smell test. Does it pass yours? Here is the email that allegedly started it (reproduced, deletions and all, from the Melville House posting):

From: Makinson, John (jMakinson@us.penguingroup.com)
To: jSargent@macmillan.com, xxxx@hachettebookgroup.com, xxxx@harpercollins.com, xxxx@simonandschuster.com, dShanks@us.penguingroup.com, xxx@xxxxxxxx.com
cc: steve@apple.com
Date: Monday, September 22, 2008, 10:46am
Subject: the $9.99 problem

Let’s get together again and keep discussing the “the $9.99 problem.” Where and when works?

For the complete thread read The Collusion Files: how it really happened by Kelly Burdick. Is this true or have we been punked?

Richard Curtis

About Richard Curtis

Richard Curtis is a leading New York literary agent (www.curtisagency.com) who foresaw the Digital Book Revolution and launched an e-book publishing company early in 2000. E-Reads (www.ereads.com) is one of the foremost independent e-book publishers in the industry, specializing in reprints of genre fiction by leading authors in their fields. Curtis is also a well-known authors advocate, author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction including several books about the publishing industry, and prolific blogger – see his hundreds of other blog posts here.

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