Nearly two months after Macmillan entered into a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice, retailers have now started offering discounted rates on Macmillan eBooks.

In February this year, Macmillan settled an eBook pricing agreement with the U.S. government, becoming the last and final publisher to enter into a settlement with the Department of Justice. It was announced that retailers would begin giving discounted rates on Macmillan eBooks within three days of the settlement, but it has taken almost two months.

According to a report by Publishers Lunch posted Thursday, retailers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble and the iBookstore have finally begun offering discounted rates on Macmillan eBooks. However, Google and Kobo are yet to begin in most cases.

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 eBooks by up to $3. Under this deal, Apple would receive 30 percent of all sales made from eBooks purchased in their iBookstore. Also, these five publishing houses would not let any other retailer sell eBooks 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 eBooks. The reason for this deal, the 6 companies cited was, because they disapproved of Amazon fixing all eBook 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.