“Amazon.com has pulled books from Macmillan, one of the largest publishers in the United States, in a dispute over the pricing on e-books on the site,” Brad Stone and Motoko Rich report for The New York Times. “The publisher’s books can be purchased only from third parties on Amazon.com.”
“Macmillan, like other publishers, has asked Amazon to raise the price of e-books to around $15 from $9.99,” Stone and Rich report. “Macmillan is one of the publishers signed on to offer books to Apple, as part of its new iBookstore on the iPad tablet unveiled earlier this week.”
“Macmillan is one of the publishers signed on to offer books to Apple, as part of its new iBookstore on the iPad tablet unveiled earlier this week,” Stone and Rich report. “Apple will allow publishers more leeway to set their own prices for e-books. Although the prices will be tethered to print book prices by a formula that will generally yield prices between $12.99 and $14.99 for most fiction and general nonfiction, that is significantly higher than $9.99 discount that Amazon offers on its Kindle.”
MacDailyNews Note: Apple’s iBookstore will be available when the first iPads hit the U.S. in late March.
Stone and Rich continue, “Publishers have been concerned that such pricing devalues books. Tensions between publishers and Amazon have been rising as publishers have withheld select e-book editions for several months after the release of hardcover versions of books. It is not clear yet if publishers can withhold books from Amazon while giving them to other parties like Apple. Antitrust lawyers said it could raise legal issues.”
MacDailyNews Take: The paradigm has shifted, Jeff. Try this on for size: Apple’s iBookstore, The Earth’s Biggest Selection of Books.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “James W.” for the heads up.]
Ahh. The demise of the kindle will be ever so sweet.
So MDN, where’s your attack on publishers for ripping off authors and customers ?
Quick question for a math wizard:
Can someone estimate how many fiction novels the first gen. top level iPad could store?
The first iPod could hold 1,000 songs.
Funny how Steve Jobs was applauded for sticking to his guns for so long with keeping iTunes Music pricing firmly at $.99 each (yeah yeah… he caved finally), yet Amazon is being slammed for doing the same with e-books. Books SHOULD be cheaper as an ebook… there are NO printing costs involved!
Hmm… what’s the iPad going to be like for reading books?
Seriously, isn’t eyestrain going to be a huge problem?
who actually pulled the books? Did MacMillan pull all of them from Amazon? Or did Amazon pull the physical books in protest of MacMillan pulling the electronic books?
(I assume it’s both the physical and electronic books.))
Why do we have to bash the Kindle and Amazon? What have they done to us? The kindle is very good at what it is designed to do: replace a print book. That’s it. That’s all. Competition is good, people. I hope the kindle gets better and better and pushes Apple to keep improving the iBooks app. Competition on book pricing is good, and Amazon is fighting that battle well.
So Apple screws the consumer, forces us to pay $6 more for books, and even that is just fine MDN?
At a certain point the fanaticism on this website goes beyond irrational.
The paradigm has shifted, bend over.
agree w/ the 2 guys before me
double standard much…funny how Apple is applauded when they refused up the price from 0.99 and yet Amazon get slammed for essentially doing the same
Books will be priced lower after a while on iPad. I agree that Apple is two faced regarding books while low pricing tunes.
Agreed – WTF!
We praised Jobs for fighting to keep .99 songs but Yay! He’s taking book downloads up $5 each – right on!
BOOKS COST TOO DAMN MUCH.
I’m with Bezos on this one.
@whocares, I agree. I admire the Kindle for what it tried to do. I thought e-ink was an amazing advance. Now I’m not so sure.
I’d like to think there will be room for computing devices that do just one thing, but do it very well (like the Kindle, the classic iPods, GPS, and VoIP phones), but can they keep up?
Something tells me we’ll always have free-standing cameras — I can’t see the Kindle surviving the decade (and probably less than a year of two).
Whocares: why? Because the air is rotten and might I’d right and everyone can pound their chest and proclaim death to anything that isn’t how I see it …. Yeah were all retarded in today’s world wher you have to demonize and polarize and be moronically dogmatic and … I was just thinking too, why is it death to any oppnent and mass mob knee jerk reaction to everything we don’t understand, or agree with …
It doesn’t have to be all or nothing, if not for mediocrity or crap how would Apple shine so bright?
Books have value, regardless of whether they are in print form or electronic. $9.99 is too cheap. Songs often sell in the millions, the vast majority of books sell in the few thousands — so higher pricing is warranted. Otherwise, no one can afford to write and publish them. I read 20-30 books a year and am glad to pay what I consider to be a reasonable price ($15 – $25) apiece.
@Roy virtually no eye strain since you can adjust the size of the font. Plus, you can see one page or two depending on which way you hold it. I’m guessing you haven’t seen the keynote yet? Spin up to about 55:40.
I see some irony here. If Amazon sells the iPad on its site, it will likely be the one of the top selling tech device on their electronics section. Yet they’re upset with Apple.
By the way, I agree with those who point out that Apple should be fighting to keep costs down. It costs much less to produce a book than a “twelve song music compilation,” formerly known as an “album,” and most of those are still $9.99 at iTunes. And with no printing, the total cost should go way down for the consumer. I’m disappointed with the price tag they are setting.
No way in hell I’m paying premium book prices thru Apple! It doesn’t cost publishers a F’ing penny to sell these things electronically! They should be severely discounted as such! $15 for an electronic book that you can’t even resell is ridiculous!
“Can someone estimate how many fiction novels the first gen. top level iPad could store?”
@Dank!: Charles Dicken’s Great Expectations hardcover edition is a total of 799 pages (3 volumes), and the plain text eBook is 1MB in size. Assuming a full 16GB of available storage on the entry level iPad, you could store 16,384 copies. Given that the average novel is probably closer ⅓ the size of Great Expectations, it’s probably safe to say 40,000-50,000 average length books. Double that for the 32GB iPad and double it again for the 64GB iPad.
@Preston, publishers have minimal overhead for digital bioks. And yet typically they pay authors even less – typically 5% for sale below a threshold, for example 10,000 copies. If you think the music industry is the pits, publishing is worse. Apple is complicit in screwing authors.
Why is Amazon afraid of Apple?
Um, so where are the sources for these quotes, exactly? Steve Jobs has already gone on record saying “the prices will be the same” as Amazon, when it comes to e-books:
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/01/29/steve_jobs_ipad_to_offer_word_support_10_ebooks_6_days_of_music.html
Just because Apple will allow publishers more leeway in pricing, doesn’t mean the prices are all going to be jacked up. It’ll probably be similar to the .69/.99/1.29 pricing tiers you currently find for music. (Well, .99/1.29 really, since the greedy labels couldn’t be bothered to move anything to .69…)
Can’t we all, y’know, WAIT to actually see what the pricing is, BEFORE the Apple-bashing? Sheesh.
Yikes, I’m in full agreement TheloniusMac.
Sure sign of the Apocalypse, er, no, actually just of MDN’s outrageous hypocrisy…
PS: Apple is looking to get all publishers and content providers to offer their products on the iPad and to showcase the interactive features, capabilities and potential of this Future Computing Household Staple…That is Apples main goal right now.
Apple has probably learned from the standoff with the music labels, that in the end, a lot of time gets wasted as a result, to the detriment of the end users and consumers and that the best way to influence the publishers’ pricing is by the consumer reacting to their pricing by voting with their wallet…
If publishers see that their high pricing is causing a freeze is purchasing , they will, as is common in retail, lower the prices…
In the case of fighting for ¢99 songs, Apple’s fight was over changing long standing prices and terms that were already established in iTunes and by doing so, alienating existing customers. That fight now is Amazon’s and Apple should concentrate as it is, on building it’s content offerings and at the same time exposing the publishers to the iPads huge potential and capabilities that will serve them well.