The American Booksellers Association (ABA) and Barnes & Noble want to be heard in the Department of Justice’s lawsuit against Apple and five publishers.

The organizations filed a motion to become a “friend of the court” in proceedings.

In the joint filing, the two groups getting rid of the agency model will harm ABA member bookstores, Barnes & Noble, and authors, which they claim will hurt competition and ultimately harm consumers. Here is an excerpt from the filing: “The end loser of this unnecessary and burdensome regulatory approach will be the American public, who will experience higher overall average e-book and hardback prices and less choice.” If the court approves this request, the ABA and Barnes & Noble have until August 15^th to file their brief.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has received 868 letters from concerned publishers, authors and readers about its civil lawsuit over eBook price-fixing. Barnes & Noble and the ABA have both commented on the case in this forum. The DOJ has archived all the commentary at this link.

Self-published authors filed their comments on the investigation earlier this month claiming that, “Amazon is creating, for the first time, real competition in publishing.”