New Lawsuit Could Completely Change The Way E-books Are Sold

Max Braun/FlickrThree independent booksellers are suing Amazon and six big publishers over an e-book deal they say gives big companies an unfair monopoly.

In the class-action complaint, Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, Fiction Addiction, and Posman Books claim Amazon, Random House, Penguin, Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and Macmillan have confidential agreements that control prices and essentially ruin independent booksellers, The Huffington Post reported Wednesday.

The complaint takes issue with the fact that if consumers buy e-books on one e-reader, like the Kindle, they can't transfer it to another e-reader, like the Nook.

"We are seeking relief for independent brick-and-mortar bookstores so that they would be able to sell open-source and DRM-free [digital rights management] books that could be used on the Kindle or other electronic ereaders," the bookstores' lawyer Alyson Decker told The Huffington Post.

Penguin declined to comment on Thursday. Amazon and the other publishing houses didn't immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

Check out the entire complaint, via The Huffington Post:

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