Photo by Knavemalkin

E-book readers, take note: you might be coming into some money, albeit a small amount, just for having read that page-turning novel on your Kindle.

D.C. Attorney General Irv Nathan announced yesterday that D.C. had joined with 49 states in a $69 million settlement with three publishers who were accused by the Department of Justice in April of colluding to raise the prices of e-books.

As part of the the settlement, the Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster have agreed to pay customers who purchased their e-books between April 1, 2010 through May 21, 2012. Of the $69 million settlement, which still has to be signed off by a judge, D.C. readers will be getting $250,000. In addition, the three publishers have agreed to give retailers the choice to drop prices on their e-books, and the publishers won’t be able to make any new agreements restricting discounts on their titles for two years.

The Justice Department originally claimed that Apple partnered with the three publishers as a means to challenge Amazon, one of the industry’s unrivaled leaders in the sale of books, reporting the New York Times:

Publishers, looking for leverage against Amazon, saw Apple as their white knight. The Justice Department complaint, using language that could have been inspired by a best-selling white-collar crime novel, describes how executives from the publishing companies met to discuss business matters “in private rooms for dinner in upscale Manhattan restaurants,” tried to hide their communications by issuing instructions to “double-delete” e-mails, all the time complaining of Amazon’s increasing influence over the e-book market.

Ultimately, the Justice Department charges, the publishers and Apple conspired to limit e-book price competition, increasing Amazon’s e-book retail prices and causing “consumers to pay tens of millions of dollars more for e-books than they otherwise would have paid.”

Two other publishers, Macmillan and Penguin, are said to have participated in the conspiracy, but they aren’t joining the settlement.