“Publishers joining Apple’s iBooks store [sic] are turning their back on Amazon and its vision of the flat $US9.99 ebook,” Matt Buchanan writes for Gizmodo.
MacDailyNews Note: Like iTunes, iBooks is the app. It connects to Apple’s iBookstore, just as iTunes connects to Apple’s iTunes Store.
Buchanan continues, “Apple forced the music industry to charge 99 US cents per song, so why are they helping publishers set their own prices? To screw Amazon.”
“The difference between Amazon and Apple is this: Amazon is very much in the ebook business to sell ebooks.. Apple, on the other hand, sells content in order to sell hardware,” Buchanan writes.
“At this moment, Amazon owns ebooks. The book publishers’ fears are the same as the record labels with iTunes: They’re paranoid about losing control over pricing, and their own digital destiny. They’re worried that books are being undervalued, and that once people have the mindset that the price of an ebook is $US9.99, and not a penny more, they’re doomed,” Buchanan explains. “They needed an insurgent player: Apple.”
“Apple has advantages that Amazon didn’t have with music: Scale and technology. iTunes has just moved three billion iPhone apps. Apple’s sold over 250 million iPods,” Buchanan explains. “By contrast, Amazon’s sold an estimate 2.5-3 million Kindles since it debuted two years ago. Analysts predict Apple will sell twice as many iPads this year alone.”
MacDailyNews Take: The analysts that are predicting 5-6 million iPads sold this year are going to have to up their estimates; they’re too low.
Buchanan continues, “In terms of technology, e-ink looks old and busted and slow next to the iPad’s bright, colour display… An iPad can do more than books: Beautiful digital magazines, interactive textbooks, a dynamic newspaper. Oh, and it’s a computer that does video, apps, music. Amazon’s scrambling now to make a multitouch full colour Kindle after betting on e-ink, but that kind of development takes at least a year. Even if they churn out a full colour reader that is somehow better than the iPad, it likely won’t matter: It would just be a very nice reader to iPad’s everything else, and it would be nine months too late.”
“Price would’ve been Amazon’s major advantage over Apple too – being able to undercut Apple by setting whatever price they needed to compete would’ve been its ace in the hole against the iPad’s flashy colour screen, and everything else it can do. And now that’s poofed,” Buchanan writes. “Apple will be able to sell you ebooks for the exact same price as Amazon. By turning the publishers against Amazon, they’ve effectively dicked the Kindle over.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The Kindle wasn’t cutting it, regardless of empty hyperbole from Bezos, willing accomplices in the media, and certain analysts. The publishing industry doesn’t have two decades for Amazon to maybe hit critical mass. Plus, Kindle is amateur-hour hardware (and software). Amazon doesn’t have the core competency to do such a device (or any device of any complexity, actually). Maybe Bezos could do an Amazon clip-on book light or something, if he wants to fool around with Amazon-branded hardware. If Amazon wants to sell e-books, then they need to forget about hardware devices — leave that to a real devices (hardware+software+services) company — and concentrate on their Kindle app for iPhone OS devices: iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.
For those of you worried that ebook prices will be higher, they won’t: we the public set the prices. If they don’t sell at a certain price, the publishers will lower them.
This is all about the publishers wanting to control the pricing via a third party (Amazon) with a vested interest in gaining a monopoly on a product. Once Amazon gained that monopoly, you can bet their prices would have risen. Now there will be fair competition!
Correction: sorry, “via” in the above should be “versus”
Regardless of how good or bad the Kindle is, it is a shame that Apple is turning its backs on consumers and letting the publishers charge outrageously high prices for their eBooks.
eBooks cost the publishers virtually NOTHING on their end to produce. They create the book ONCE in electronic format, and their costs are complete. Even $9.99 was too expensive for an eBook, and yet now Apple is enabling these publishers to screw over consumers even more… in most cases, these eBook prices are HIGHER than going out and buying the paperback version for yourself! And with the paperback version, you can lend it out to a friend, you can keep it on your bookshelf, and you can throw it into your backpack without fear of it being damaged. Plus, a regular book is easier on your eyes.
What Apple did with music pricing was fantastic — they put the power back in consumers’ hands again, after years of being fskced over by the record industry who insisted that you must be an entire album instead of single tracks. 99 cents per track was a fair price. Unfortunately, the new $1.29 pricing for popular songs is not a fair price, but at least Apple got DRM-free music out of the deal.
But what Apple is doing with book pricing is not consumer-friendly at all. It is now more cost-effective and beneficial to just order the actual book. With music, it made SENSE to buy through iTunes. This doesn’t make much sense at all, because it’s all about benefitting the publishers’ coffers.
It’s ironic that Amazon probably sold a ton of iPhone/Cocoa/Obj-C programming books in the last couple of years that helped spurred on the success of the App Store.
It’ll be great if e-books on iPad will really be more preferable than a paperback. I can then have all my computer books in one device everywhere I go. And when the next gen iPad that is even more powerful comes with a truly graphical, touch-based XCode for programming. You buy an e-book on programming iPad on the iPad. You create an app on the iPad. You sell it on iTunes, and make a killing. Then it’s game over.
@MacBill.
Absolutely right. And for those who claim this is to help authors, i say B.S. Most authirs are lucky to see 10% royalties.
So, MDN, where is your attack on publishers ? And on Apple for facilitating their efforts to screw Amazin and, therefore, the consumer.
Apple have great products, in general, and have helped the music consumer. But they have not helped the reader.
Yay I get to pay more for ebooks with no physical product, no resale, and one use (I never reread books)! Yay Apple! Is iBooks coming to iPhone as well?
@ MacBill
I disagree. Artificially making all eBooks sell for 9.99 does not recognize that some books are worth more than others. Do you expect a technical manual, textbook, or a dictionary to have the same development cost that a pulp fiction romance written by Aunt Jenny on her lunch-break with a $399 POS Dell? Should Springer-Verlag sell the hardback “Handbook of Nuclear Engineering” for $2,900.00, but let the eBook (which they *are* producing) go for $9.99? Without being able to differentiate by price, eBooks will stay the little niche that the Kindle is creating; we’d only ever find cheap trade books.
Also, I wonder why it’s “not consumer-friendly” to let the *producer* establish (and adjust) the price, rather than the distributor? Apple and Amazon are conduits — they don’t create or produce books. They run servers, a great web-store, and collect sales receipts. They should be able to make a reasonable profit, but they should *not* be able to dictate to the publishers what their profit should be. That would be the same as letting MacConnection, MacWarehouse, or MacMall dictate selling prices to Apple.
By the way, I’d be interested in seeing the computation you used to determine that 99¢ is a “fair” price for music, but $1.29 isn’t.
@ iMaki
“one use (I never reread books)!”
You really need to get a different criterion for buying books!
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I wonder what it costs to print and distribute a book? Bet it’s not much. In fact, on a $15.99 paperback, I’ll bet it’s not more than $2.00. Perhaps less.
So a $9.99 ebook does seem like a rip. We think that since it’s pixels, ones and zeros that the cost should be next to nothing. That’s why college kids are still telling each other, “Oh, you pay for music? I can tell you where to get it for free.” (Recently overheard). They think it’s cash value is next to zero or should be.
Like music producing and news writing, book publishing is intensive, difficult work that needs a professional team willing to put in all the work to make it happen. 90% of the cost of getting a book out there isn’t the printing and distributing (I’m guessing, as I wrote above), but getting to that point.
As much as I’d love $2.99 ebooks and would buy gazillions of them, I do think it’s fair to have the publishers set the prices.
…
Gosh, I sure would love $2.99 ebooks, though.
(MW: “read”)
@ Nerd Beautiful
A rule of thumb in publishing is that printing covers about 10% of the wholesale price.
@ bjh
Current standard publishing contracts give authors ~20% (of the wholesale price, not retail) for ‘trade books’ like paperback fiction, etc., and ~13% for textbooks. Some technical books are done as ‘work for hire,’ then there are no royalties, just a one time payment.
Apple can’t sell what it can’t make. Time and again launches of popular products have fallen far short of demand (whether the shortage was manufactured or due to manufacturing is irrelevant). Six million? Twice that!?! Seriously doubtful.
No matter how u view it, there is nothing better than free markets and competition for the consumer.
I was never in favor of Apple dictating the music labels how much they can charge.
effectively Apple bought the publishers just like the last major studio bought bluray. I forget which one it was.
@ Macbill,
So how should a brain surgeon make for a living? An auto mechanic make for a living? a rocket scientist make for a living? An author make for a living? You don’t like $9.99 don’t pay it, buy your paper backs and enjoy life.
Just because Amazon charges $9.99 for books doesn’t mean Apple will I can’t even find the iBook app to buy it much less find a price for any books for sale yet.
Like someone else wrote… Just because they are 1’s and 0’s doesn’t mean they aren’t worth something……
“Just because they are 1’s and 0’s doesn’t mean they aren’t worth something”
“If they are my ones and zeroes and they look like fuckable, blue space cat aliens, then you’ll pay me what I want, nerd,” hypothetically paraphrasing James Cameron.
I wish people who are defending Apple allowing the publishers to rape the consumers with their eBook policy would stop parroting that all Kindle books are $9.99. It isn’t true, so please stop repeating it. I have purchased technical books on the Kindle that cost over $50 (with the physical book being over $80). Amazon is not “artificially” limiting prices to $9.99 – it is only most NYT bestsellers that are $9.99 – there is a lot of variation in the Kindle eBook prices already.
The only thing this is going to do is ensure that the starting price for ebooks from the major publishers have a higher starting price, which sucks.
ReadMuch?: Save “rape” for when you’ve been bent over and taken against your will, hyperbole poster.
iMaki: “Yay I get to pay more for ebooks with no physical product, no resale, and one use (I never reread books)! Yay Apple! Is iBooks coming to iPhone as well?”
Don’t forget, though, the excitement of scrolling through all the titles to see which one the Ministry of Trvth has disappeared overnight.
MDN Take … Kindle is amateur-hour hardware (and software)
Uh oh. With that take you might not see DLMeyer ’round these parts fer a while. He’s got Kindle books to read don’tcha’ know. Maybe he can open the web app and make a comment … oh wait.
“I never reread books”
That’s pathetic and possibly psychotic.
It amazes me that a lot of people that argue against the raising of prices is basing their argument on the material costs, rather than the “value” of that book, its contents. A really good book is “worth” more to readers, and probably cost the author a lot more time to create. We get all material for free from the earth… we pay for the labour that goes into creating and distributing the finished product.
It’s time for Amazon to hook up with Microsoft (sleeeware) and HP (crapola) to produce another failure in the “I’m going to beat Apple” race. You know the saying “birds of a feather, flock together”.
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poor amazon. They spend all this time, money, effort just to boost up the ebook market. Only to see Apple come in and snatch their work away… LOL
The irony
A few books I’ve read again and again and again:
Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse
Dune, Frank Herbert
Deuteronomy, Authors Unknown
Every Single Play and Sonnet Too Multiple to List, William Shakespeare
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke
Psalms, Authors Unknown
The Stand, Stephen King
Green Eggs and Ham, Dr. Seuss or Theodor Seuss Geisel
Hop on Pop, Dr. Seuss or Theodor Seuss Geisel
Gone With The Wind, Margaret Mitchell
Ulysses, James Joyce
The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
Common Sense, Thomas Paine
Metamagical Themas (check the anagram), Douglas Hofstadter
The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer
. . . possibly a few more.
I don’t read books because they cost too much. It is hard enough keeping up on my Apple hardware habit and keeping food and medical for the family. There are a couple of books I want to read and wanted to get them on Audible, but sorry $20 for a book I will only read once . You can kiss my ass. Now $5.00 ( that is all an e- book is worth) $ 5.00 a book and I am all over it, and reading more and more.
“You can kiss my ass.”
Gee, thanks. You don’t have a library?
Oh yeah, and I’ve read most of Salinger’s and Vonnegut’s books three times.
What happened to literate people?
Your is a possessive form of you, idiots.
I’m sorry, but unless Apple competes with Amazon in the audiobook market (Audible) then it really makes no difference to me what ebooks they sell. I can’t read an ebook while driving, mowing the lawn or working out like I can listen to an audiobook.
As far as reading, I still like paper, so bookstores and the public library will still see me on a regular basis.
What Apple did with music pricing made sense from several standpoints. First, the $0.99 model was attractive and simple for consumers. That was critical to the effort to kick off an online music marketplace and the music industry was a bit desperate and willing to experiment. These factors are far less applicable to the book industry. Second, the online price really wasn’t generally that much lower than the price of the physical media. However, consumers found additional value in the fact that they could purchase individual songs rather than being forced into buying albums to obtain only a few good songs. This may be applicable to some media, such as magazine articles, if the material is provided under that model. But it does not apply to books. You aren’t going to buy just chapters 1, 3 and 5. Third, the change in ebook pricing and revenue proportions greatly weakened Amazon and is already vaulting Apple into the dominant position, even before the iPad is available. Apple had to compromise and cede a greater degree of control to booksellers in order to gain this advantage.
All of that aside, the truth of the matter is in the first post by zmarc. The price of something is determined by supply and demand. If you believe that ebook prices are too high, then do not buy any of them. If enough consumers act along the same lines, then ebook prices will decline.
My biggest concern is that physical books will gradually become more expensive and less available. I like to be able to carry a paperback with me to enjoyably pass some time while waiting in line or for an appointment. How will libraries function in the age of ebooks? It seems to me that a single virtual library could address a large portion of the functionality of all of the existing brick and mortar libraries open today, *if* ebooks can be shared in the same way. But I am very concerned that ebook DRM will severely limit options in this regard.
I will miss the new book and old book smells, too.
Apple already does offer audiobooks through iTunes…
@ Sarasota
“… unless Apple competes with Amazon in the audiobook market”
Huh? Loof for that little CD icon in your dock with the music symbol. This App is called iTunes. Click that one time and welcome to a whole new world.
@ MacBill
“…Apple is turning its backs on consumers and letting the publishers charge outrageously high prices for their eBooks.”
zmarc (1st post) Already explained this to you in detail but you insisted spewing out your slanted point of view anyway?
“For those of you worried that ebook prices will be higher, they won’t: we the public set the prices. If they don’t sell at a certain price, the publishers will lower them.”
Book prices will be all over the board (as they should be) Publishers have every right to sell books for whatever the market will bear. Just like you can charge whatever you wish for your services. You’ll see titles selling for 99¢ up to $50 I suppose.
@bjh
“…MDN, where is your attack on publishers?”
See above.
NEWS FLASH:
I haven’t read the fine print but I don’t think it’s mandatory to buy an iPad or frequent the iBook store. If you don’t like the pricing, or prefer a real book, you are free to make your choice. (Just like a Publisher)
Seems to me it’s pretty simple.
If you think the ebooks are over priced – don’t but them.
If there really is such a thing as a free economy, the market will correct itself.
If there isn’t a free economy, what chance did you have anyway?
As I see it, Apple sold out. They sacrificed the 9.99 price to consumers in order to enter the market. Content is obviously going to be more expensive now that Apple has entered, thanks.
Still looking forward to the iPad though as I don’t read books (I’m a nerd, i read manuals).
“Maybe Bezos could do an Amazon clip-on book light or something,” …
I had a good laugh on that one.
@Ubermac
“No matter how u view it, there is nothing better than free markets and competition for the consumer.
I was never in favor of Apple dictating the music labels how much they can charge.”
I never had a problem with it. Someone needed to show the music industry that it was full of crap. The market proved that Apple was correct.
“As I see it, Apple sold out. They sacrificed the 9.99 price to consumers in order to enter the market. Content is obviously going to be more expensive now that Apple has entered, thanks. “
Bullshit. Prove it or STFU.
I don’t get this idea that Apple sold out or compromised in order to lure publishers from Amazon.
All Apple did is offer to publishers the exact same deal they do to App developers: the content maker sets the price and keeps 70% of the sale. Clean, simple, efficient.
If you look at Amazon, the fine print in their publishing agreement is 20 pages long. Their newest agreement (in order for the publisher to get the 70% rate) mandates that the publisher cannot sell the ebook anywhere else for less than Amazon sells it! Outrageous. What gives Amazon, a mere etailer, the right to set my prices on a different site?
I’m sorry, but I vote for simple and clear on this one. If I need a lawyer and an accountant just to figure out what Amazon owes me from my book sales, I’m publishing elsewhere.
Perhaps Amazon can make it up in volume by selling iPads at a
discounted rate. Say entry level at $450.00??
“My biggest concern is that physical books will gradually become more expensive and less available… How will libraries function in the age of ebooks”
New releases of physical hardbacks are now going for $27, a hell of a lot of money to pay for a book. No way many people are going to Barnes & Noble or Borders to shell out that much money for a single book, at least not without a 40% coupon. Borders is on the way out, much like Circuit City, CompUSA and the others, and it most likely won’t last the year. The writing is on the wall for libraries: they’re dead and will begin closing their doors en masse in the coming years.
In many ways the publishers have done this to themselves. Fuddy duddy CEOs and management were clueless to the digital revolution, hitting them totally unprepared for what’s coming. Out of the ashes young new start up, digital-only publishers will replace them. The only way traditional publishers will survive is to recognize the opportunities opened up by ebooks. If they think they won a battle with Amazon by being able to price their books for more than $9.99, they’re in for a big surprise. Jeff Bezos knows better.
@MacBill,
“eBooks cost the publishers virtually NOTHING on their end to produce. “
So, your work efforts amount to zero also?? People spend up to a year working on writing a book, not to mention the time it takes to develop the knowledge base in the first place.
But actually I would like to see music artists and writers bypass the whole studio thing and go directly to direct publishing. Getting 70% of their sales (- some small amount to a middle man who knows how to make the whole thing work) sounds much better.
Just a thought.
en
I agree the market will ultimately decide. I suspect publishers had enough leverage to get a pricing compromise… that is, Apple needs them and they need Apple.
As for me, eBooks are worth less than paperbacks which are less than hardbacks. If not, I’ll buy the physical versions. I believe that’s a common feeling.
Why is everyone missing the most obvious difference?
If you sell something for less than a dollar, everybody will buy it. That’s how iTunes store became what it is. But selling something at $10 instead of $12 will not make an ounce of difference.
Amazon, thinking they were smart by copying Apple’s lead to set the price, didn’t realize what Apple does, that at this price point it doesn’t help sales at all.
Why would anyone with an iPad use the kindle app when there is iBooks?
Kindle is screwed.
@Renaldo
I don’t know if you have visited a local library lately, but all of the libraries near me are always packed.
Especially after school there are usually no empty seats.
I don’t see a mad rush to close public libraries.
It’s simple. If e-books are priced too high in the iBooks Store and on Amazon, the prices will come down.
Apple didn’t screw over anyone but Amazon. Amazon was screwing over the publishers and indirectly the authors. They won’t from now on. Consumers will set the price with their buying decisions.
@MacBill
You are an idiot.
What, writer’s hard work counts for nothing? You don’t want to pay them what their work is worth?
As I have said before in these forums, stop by and shovel all the snow out of my drive for $3.99. That’s what I think “your” hard work is worth.
I read about 3-4 books a week, with Stanza, search their free books, thousands of older books, lots of classics, I’ve gotten hooked on old
sci fi books, read “After London”. , after you read it, look at what year it was written , you’ll flip
All the others bitching about the paperbacks being cheaper than what Apple will charge.
You are forgetting that books are released in stages: Hardback, paperback, discount shelf. EBooks will be released the same way: Highest price for certain amount of time, lower price for another amount of time, cheapest price for another set amount of time.
See, it’s really easy to understand now.
Hopefully you all complaining get it this time.
Apple is not the bad guy, they are just letting the publishers sell their stuff at the price they want.
Let the market decide.
Or put it this way: Should Apple force all Apps in the iPhone store to be sold for 99¢? Even the ones that are currently $20, $50, $100?
Why do App developers get to set their price? Oh I get it, eBooks are different.
…or Apple was only able to come to an agreement with publishers if they charged more for an eBook than Amazon. Apple is a big hardware maker, but a fringe player in the eBook market. For Buchanan to think that Apple arbitrarily picked $14.99 just to screw over Amazon is stupid. Apple can get away with allowing publishers to charge the higher prices they demanded because of the added value of the iPad. It just so happens that Amazon – for whatever reason – decided to cave and allow publishers to charge more. There goes your price advantage. You could have at least let Macmillan squirm for a few weeks before bending over.
And for people commenting on how much it costs to make an eBook and how that should be reflected in the price should seriously considering killing themselves. The medium by which the work comes to market is nothing compared to the investment in writing and promoting it. It’s kind of pathetic that I’d have to spell that out, but it seems a few commenters have their heads up their asses. You’re welcome.
@Think,
I didn’t forget that paperbacks are delayed… one of the reasons why they’re cheaper. Thanks for bringing that up… but they’re still worth more to me than eBooks.
Btw, I do think there’s value and other people may find them more useful. However, they’re virtually free to “manufacture” and they’re less portable (I won’t take the iPad to the pool, beach) and they’re not transferrable (loan, sell)… do’t need to be recharged.
I can beleieve the industry will have big changes. Maybe B&N;stores close… but right now libraries are more crowded than ever.
It would be great to have Apple stand on reducing the cost of public school and college books. A cost reduction at these two points would be great on wallets and backs!
Maybe Apple is choosing where to fight. It is a hopeful thought.
I wont buy DRM-ed content anyway, so it doesn’t really matter for me.
As much as I disagree with “zmarc,” I think he’s right. (or she)
The less popular books will be discounted if they expect to sell any of them, while the publishers will get away with charging more for the hot books.
Apple’s formula sounds like the only way eBooks (or make that iBooks) can sell for more is if they also charge more for the paper books. Also, competition from Amazon isn’t going to just go away. Expect price wars.
In any case, the electronic books should cost less.
Electronic books should cost at most $2 less than hardcover books, since that is approximately the cost of printing, warehousing and distributing a harcover book.
As for DRM, so far, NOBODY ever mentioned anything about ePUB format being encumbered by DRM. Not Jobs, not Phil Shiller, not the guy from NY Times… Unlike Amazon’s proprietary, DRM-infested Kindle format, ePUB is an open standard format, supported by number of companies, and there is no specific DRM tied to it. For all we know, you should be able to do with this book anything you’re able to do with a paperback (including making a copy and giving it to someone else; much like AAC file from iTunes music store).
Where did this DRM talk come from anyway?
What would be meaningful, is that the writers could be paid for their long term job… Instead of having all gone and lost along the edition-production-sales process.
You must consider that the big house publishers are kings of bodt, books on dead trees. Apple has the ability to turn the bookstore into an app store by making individual works available through a deal directly with the author. In the digital world we don’t need no stinking publishers. Everyman is free to “publish”.
“.. but right now libraries are more crowded than ever.”
First, libraries are crowded not because people are checking out books, but because of people using the public computers. At least 50% of library usage is for computers. People are checking out books as well, but usage is not the reason libraries will continue to shrink and eventually close: their budgets are being slashed by city/county governments. Skyrocketing insurance/pension costs, fire and police departments, and the ongoing Republican Tea Bagger movement (“No government is good government!”), will insure that cultural centers like libraries will be suffocated out of existence.
“eBooks cost the publishers virtually NOTHING on their end to produce.”
Yeah, ’cause we all know that writers work for free. Sheesh!
“these eBook prices are HIGHER than going out and buying the paperback version for yourself!”
And they FORCE people to buy the eBook so they can’t get the lower price!
“And with the paperback version, you can lend it out to a friend, you can keep it on your bookshelf…”
And, if you want to read it on an electronic device, you can scan it in page by page, run OCR on it,then fix up the errors OR type it all in by hand!
“Yeah, ’cause we all know that writers work for free. Sheesh!”
Actually, most published authors do work for free, and as an average authors receive only about 10% of the purchase price of a book. The postings here are only referring to bestselling authors, who only make up a tiny fraction of the publishing market. The publishing industry (including copyright) largely exists to sustain book publishing itself, not to support authors. If you think authors are making money from the current publishing system, you need to take a closer look.
Not sure why anyone thinks that Apple is ‘doing’ anything here. The publishers have hated their terrible deals with Amazon over eBooks. Now Amazon have competition, the publishers are glad to be able to play Amazon off with Apple.
With these prices, I’ll just continue to check my books out of the library.
Sorry, but Amazon’s forced $9.99 ebook price came at the high cost of selection. What good is being able to save a couple of bucks if you can’t find the books you want? I installed the Kindle app for iPhone and tried searching for a few of my favorites and nearly none of them were available. I blame Amazon’s pricing policy. Publishers are choosing to withhold books rather than give everything away for less money than it’s worth. Likewise, new books probably rarely show up for Kindle at the same time they are released in hardcover print because publishers don’t want ebooks to severely undercut hardcover prices, so again selection suffers. Apple’s model will likely see ebooks release at the same time as new hardcovers and as someone already pointed out, when the cheaper paperback gets released, the ebook price will drop. When the paperback is being discounted, the ebook price will likely drop again. So it’s extremely unlikely that all books will always cost $12.99-$14.99. We will see plenty of books for $9.99 and less. We’ll also see plenty of free books as the iBookstore will give us acces to a huge library of out of copyright/public domain books just like Stanza and other reader apps do.
Lastly, many iBooks will have higher value to the consumer because they will be in colour and include multimedia and interactivity that just isn’t currently possible with the one price fits all black and white Kindle books.
Chill out people, the future looks bright!
I read a lot of fiction maybe two books a week. I almost never buy a book. I get them at the library. That said, consider an author that self publishes at the IBook store and sells 1 million at 99 cents. That would gross them $700,000 after the store takes its cut.Somebody like King or Grisham could sell tens of millions. And I would probably buy 40 or 50 books a year. I bought very little music prior to ITunes and now my computer is loaded with songs. Authors can do well. Publishers might be in trouble.
“But what Apple is doing with book pricing is not consumer-friendly at all. It is now more cost-effective and beneficial to just order the actual book. With music, it made SENSE to buy through iTunes. This doesn’t make much sense at all, because it’s all about benefitting the publishers’ coffers.”
Who cares about the consumer!!! If these books are overpriced, Apple’s margins will be higher!!!! We Apple fans don’t care about the consumer – just hope Apple makes lots of money!!!
BTW, the iPad is priced way to low!!! I think it should start at about $1500!!! I’m sure there’s enough of us to buy one that AAPL will go higher!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Woooo Hoooo Go Steve!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Apple is in the hardware business. iBooks will sell hardware.
Apple is merely playing the game in a way that is palatable to publishers. Charge what you like, it’s your product. The unspoken subtext is that – you’ll have to revisit your thinking if you find that no one is buying at your preferred prices. A typical novel is no different to a CD of songs. It is a piece of work. But how much work? If I liked original music from a band I would be prepared to pay a little more for it than mere cover versions of other people’s songs. Similarly, biographies, old books, text books (which rarely change in some cases), software how-to books (which have a shorter useful life because of the march of software upgrades), short story collections and other variants of books should have some kind of matched scale of charging. Short books and long books. Books with high production values, costly original photography etc. There is great diversity in book formats, book markets, content value etc.
In the end, after the publishing industry has had its practical education in the new rules of the eMarket, I think prices will slowly trend lower. And new book prices will fall as time passes. Apple knows all this and has factored the new rules into its thinking. It is the publisher who faces a rude awakening – all publishers, but especially news and magazine publishers whose content has the shortest shelf-life of all, as little as a few hours of value in this day of tv and the internet. I stopped buying newspapers and magazines about two years ago and I used to be a major magazine buyer. Now I can find out everything I need to know whenever I feel like looking for it.
The interesting thing is that there will be new kinds of multimedia books and self-publishing will gradually take off. A good thing. Apple will support authors who follow that route too.
Bad news for agents in the long term.
I have 3 kids. 6, 4, & 2. I expect the iPad, with it’s capacity for interactive reading materials, is going to be huge with my kids and their ability to learn to read. My oldest is reading the Magic Tree House books – add in some short video animations of the scenes after reading and she won’t be able to put the thing down. That’s good news for her generation – anything to get kids to read more is good news in my book. Even if the books are the same price as hard books – I think the interactive elements will be more helpful in the education arena – and for that reason – to me, at least, are worth the price.
Much of the talk here is about best sellers and their ebook price v. hard cover price. I’m guessing in a few years those arguments will be the least topical pertaining to the iPad. Interactive books may help to make actually educating our people a priority again. Hopefully.
Rules, rules, rules! There are no rules in songwriting. There are no rules in karma. And there are no rules in Apple’s approach to content pricing. Just cause and effect.
Outrage that Apple treats ‘books’ differently from music fails, as far as I can see it. The established economic structure of music sales was a relatively limited structure: 1) song, 2) album. I suppose Apple could have tried–and perhaps even did try–to revolutionize that structure. But I don’t think it would have worked. Therefore, the insistence on the 99-cent song, with eventual distinct but limited variation.
However, in my opinion the economic structure of ‘book’ content is so chaotic as to make direct comparison with music impossible. In music you just don’t have the equivalent of a 24-page children’s book on the one hand contrasted with a 600-page medical reference book on the other. These kinds of distinctions aren’t arbitrary, they’re fundamental. Periodicals are in there, too, so what will you do about single-price limits for all ‘magazines’, or all ‘newspapers’?
It’s true that the disparity in printing costs of books and other text content disappears when you go to ebooks. That’s one of the issues that drives some of the criticism about Apple’s ebook pricing position; but there are still huge disparities in scale and complexity of ‘books’.
I recently read–with great delight–a blog entry from someone criticizing Apple’s pricing decision for ebooks using a few logical fallacies along with a couple instances of actual disinformation. When called on the validity of his/her argument, the response was “I hate the way Apple…”
It was pretty clear to me that the hate came first, then the tortured logic to prop it up.
Why the hate? My bet’s on narcissistic rage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_rage, for which the first few decades of the 21st Century will unfortunately become famous. Paradoxically, superiority is more dangerous than we can even imagine.
What’s obvious in all this discussion is that people have different interest in eBooks vs. physical vs. no books. All of this will ultimately factor into the market prices.
As for the argument that eBooks should just be slightly less hardbacks (taking out difference in manufacturing, shipping, shelving)… that makes sense on some level but it doesn’t address the difference in what they’re worth…eBooks are worth less to me… but I’m sure they’re worth more to other people for a variety of reasons.
I’m on Amazons side. Love Apple’s products but Apple should have fought for us (the consumer) to get prices down.
I will never buy a novel as an ebook for more than $3.99 and 39.99 for text books or specialized subjects.
I do agree that the publishers should set the prices as I agreed that the music industry should set there prices. But Apple did fight for us to keep the prices down also striped out the DRM and upped the quality a bit. What are we getting this time?
The real story here is that Amazon tried to break into the MP3 music downloads with DRM free @ .99. Apple is now kicking back with giving publishers what the want and killing off the Kindle business.
Just the way I see it.
“They sacrificed the 9.99 price to consumers in order to enter the market.”
Well your own statement there indicates that if they had not ‘sacrificed’ it, they could not have entered the market. I assume you’re not a shareholder.
There is a seedy underbelly to Apple’s strategy that is repeatedly ignored – it is to screw the competition. But self-enlightened fanboys can’t face the truth – so it’s coated in some sort of sugar coated humanistic blather. It is what it is. Corporate america – no matter how Apple chooses to present it.
@cb “But self-enlightened fanboys…”
Thanks for automatically disqualifying yourself from actual discussions among the grownups here, cb. Please take your peashooter and peabrain out to the yard where the other kids are playing. Although with your attitude, you’ll probably just end up getting chucked in the sandbox.
@cb
Go back to your wipe and install.
Competition is good for consumers and bad news for middlemen such as publishers and agents.
Here are a few predictions:
– Apple will run out of iPad in 7 days
– iPad will outsell Kindle in 90 days
– Apple will make more profit from Bookstore and Appstore than the iPad hardware
– iPad will have more educational and interactive books for children in 2010 ready for Xmas season (combining reading, audio, movie, and touch capabilities
– Kindle will fail trying to compete with iPad for children demographics
– iPad largest buyer demographic will be the elderly who have avoided the internet and children
There is still a a market for kindle like devices until iPad 2nd generation comes along and the 1st gen 16GB iPad start to sell for $299 and $199 for 2nd hand on eBay.
…”Pad largest buyer demographic will be the elderly who have avoided the internet and children”
Not all elderly avoid children; some tend to like them quite much (especially if they are their own grandkids)…
Predrag
We older folks want dogs when our kids move out. Dogs just want affection, they don’t care about your wallet.
Mehran
The elderly’s parents built the first computer. We all have them now.
@cb,
how is Apple “screwing the competition”? Like it or not, business is war, and in war one of the objectives is to outmaneuver your opponent. Apple is not immune to being outsmarted in business (see Microsoft). The difference between Apple’s tactics and those of Google, Microsoft and others is that Apple actually has better products with which to “compete”.
Apple’s tactics since the intro of the iMac are a testament not only to Apple’s business prowess, but a constant reminder to those companies who rest on their laurels after achieving a certain amount of success.
“They should be able to make a reasonable profit, but they should *not* be able to dictate to the publishers what their profit should be.”
Amazon was buying its recent books at an agreed-upon price and selling them at a loss, in order to expand the market. The publishers’ profit level wasn’t affected by Amazon’s discounting.
I suspect the recent push by publishers to raise e-book prices is just a gesture to appease bookstore chains & indie stores, which are struggling from competition from Amazon and e-books. After six months, when publishers can point to a sharp drop in e-book sales but no relief in bookstore woes, they’ll have the excuse they need to let Amazon (and Apple?) lower its prices.
I doubt that anyone even knew about the existence of the $9.99 book price (outside of a very narrow group of Kindle users). Thus, the impact of the price change on the perception of the average book-buying consumer is practically non-existent.
The average book buying consumer is yet to embrace an e-Book as a format for their book buying. Obviously, the iPad will be THE facilitator for that, and it will be clear if the price will work or not.
As I said, to cover the difference in distribution costs between hardcover and e-Book, the price difference should be no more than about $2. The rest of the difference should represent the subjective value of physical hard copy vs. electronic soft copy, which is, well, subjective. Much like with the music industry, it will be something that the publishing industry will have to find out.
Apple just preempted Amazon’s plans to force the publishers into contracts that would have made Amazon the largest an exclusive e-book publisher for all the largest book publishers in the world. At which point Amazon could then tell Barns & Noble, Sony, Apple and the rest to go pound sand. Then of course e-book prices would start to rise from $9.99 to $12.99 then to $15.99 and on up past $19.99. Apples strike on Amazon was to fight Amazon and prevent the publisherS from entering into Amazons exclusive contracts.
“”The difference between Amazon and Apple is this: Amazon is very much in the ebook business to sell ebooks.. Apple, on the other hand, sells content in order to sell hardware,” Buchanan writes.”
and the Kindle is what?
We’ve gone through this pricing thing with music in the iTunes music store. A lower, standardized price is better. You might get a lower per unit price, but you will sell more units…
MDN,
Really, Busting the author over “iBooks Store?”
If Apple does have, as you infer, the “iTunes Store” for its “iTunes” app, then it makes perfect sense for them to have the “iBooks Store” for its “iBooks” app. If Apple uses the name “iBookstore”, then it is them being inconsistent, and a reporter on deadline shouldn’t be wrist-slapped over terminology of an as-yet unreleased product.
I’m usually a stickler for correctness in articles, but it seems here you are just trying to be the obnoxious kid in the front of the room trying to show off.
@MDN,
“If Amazon wants to sell e-books, then they need to forget about hardware devices — leave that to a real devices (hardware+software+services) company — and concentrate on their Kindle app for iPhone OS devices: iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.”
How much do you want to bet that on or before the day that the iBookstore opens, the Kindle app will get banned from the ITunes App Store.
The article gives the general impression that all kindle books are 9.99 or less. Wrong! Because I needed certain to consult certain technical works otherwise unavailable while traveling in distant places, I’ve forked out as much as 51.17 for e-books to read on my ipod touch/iphone. The quality of the technical drawings, charts, etc. was really crappy, too. I expect the ipad will do a much better job of presenting a whole range of texts that go beyond paper back best sellers and not necessarily charge more. As sold by Amazon at present, many technical books are a rip-off in my opinion.
Q: What was the favorite Christmas present for 2009?
A: The Barnes and Nobel ‘Nook’ eBook reader. NOT the Amazon Kindle.
The Nook isn’t perfect, but it runs rings around the Kindle regarding user-friendliness. So, if Barnes and Nobel can out-do Amazon with hardware, there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell Amazon will catch up with Apple’s eBook reader, the iPad.
Q: What will be the favorite Christmas present for 2010?
A: The Apple iPad.
So, why do writers need publishers now? Can’t they just run their prose through Pages or InDesign and sell it via iBooks?