Macmillan settled an e-book pricing agreement with the U.S. Government, becoming the last and final publisher to enter into a settlement with the Department of Justice.

In April, 2012, five publishing houses - Macmillan, Penguin, HarperCollins, Hachette and Simon & Schuster entered into a deal with Apple to create what was called the agency model, which allowed these publishing houses to raise the price of their e-books by up to $3. Under this deal, Apple would receive 30 percent of all sales made from e-books purchased in their iBookstore. Also these five publishing houses would not let any other retailer sell e-books at a price lesser than available at the iBookstore. Through this deal, the publishers and not the retailers would have the power to fix the price of their e-books. The reason for this deal, the 6 companies cited was, because they disapproved of Amazon fixing all e-book prices sold through them at $9.99.

The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against them for conspiring to establish a backroom collusion which was illegal.

HarperCollins, Hachette and Simon & Schuster agreed to an immediate settlement with the U.S. government and Penguin followed suit last December. Macmillan and Apple were the only two companies left to battle the lawsuit. However, now Macmillan too has reached an agreement with the DOJ which bans them from performing any similar deals for the next two years along with them having to cancel their agency-pricing deal with Apple.

Apple is yet to comment on this latest settlement but called the previous settlements "fundamentally unfair, unlawful, and unprecedented" in a memo they released in August. Apple's trial is scheduled to begin June 2013.