Sixteen states have joined the US Department of Justice in suing Apple and a number of publishers over allegedly colluding to fix e-book prices. Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen made the announcement on Wednesday afternoon just hours after the DoJ filed its antitrust suit in New York, saying that Apple, Macmillan, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster engaged in an "anticompetitive price-fixing scheme" when selling e-books through Apple's iBookstore.

"Publishers deserve to make money, but consumers deserve the price benefits of competition in an open and unrestricted marketplace," Jepsen said in a statement. "Those interests clearly collided in this case and we are going to work to ensure the eBook market is open once again to fair competition."

The effort is being led by Connecticut and Texas, with Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Missouri, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, West Virginia, and Puerto Rico joining the ranks. The states aren't targeting all of the publishers originally accused of plotting with Apple, though. Harper Collins and Hachette have already come to an agreement with the states that they will provide restitution to consumers "using a formula based on the number of states participating and the number of eBooks sold in each state." The specific details of the settlement have yet to be worked out, according to Jepsen, but will be finalized in the coming weeks.