“Apple’s new multimedia tablet device, with a 10-inch touch screen that is expected to deliver video, text, navigation and social-networking applications, could change the way much of traditional media is delivered,” Trachtenberg reports. “For the book industry, the Apple tablet is bringing to a head a brewing battle between Apple and industry heavyweight Amazon.com Inc. over how e-books—seen as the future of the book industry—will be priced and distributed.”
Trachtenberg reports, “Apple’s business model for books, which the company has kept under tight wraps, shifts the focus away from the bargain-basement prices Amazon has made popular, according to publishers that have met directly with the company. Apple is asking publishers to set two e-book price points for hardcover best sellers: $12.99 and $14.99, with fewer titles offered at $9.99. In setting their own e-book prices, publishers would avoid the threat of heavy discounting. Apple would take a 30% cut of the book price, with publishers receiving the remaining 70%. Apple’s vision is at odds with Amazon.com, which has shaken the book industry by slashing prices of e-books on its Kindle reader and making the $9.99 e-book best seller an industry fixture.”
“Amazon typically pays publishers about half of the cover price of a new hardcover book for e-book best sellers,” Trachtenberg reports. “For example, Sarah Palin’s recent memoir, ‘Going Rogue,’ has a hardcover price of $28.99, which means the publisher likely received about $14.50 for the e-book edition. Since Amazon today sells that e-book for $9.99, the bookseller is losing about $4.50 on each sale—a hit it has been willing to take to build a dominant market share in e-books and power sales of its Kindle reading device.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Lynn W.” and “Citymark” for the heads up.]
With that type of revenue increase from apple ebook sales, I can see why publishers are jumping frantically over the Tablet. 14.99 for a best seller is kind of high for digital, but if it’s portable to a desktop computer and other apple devices….maybe. Hopefully the ability to print and use text to speech won’t be disabled based on wishes from the publisher.
The beggining of another frontier change
Send in Jack Bauer.
Time for Apple to change the tech game again.
Tomorrow, don’t just fixate on the device, amazing though it will likely be. What will drive the success of the (INSERT PRODUCT NAME HERE) will be the protective moat of the iTunes Store (now with a book store???), the deals to be announced tomorrow and in coming weeks with newspaper, magazine, book and textbook publishers, and more. I am beginning to wonder if the entire concept of what we call a book will change because of this. Books have always been static. But now, the definition of a book will expand to include interactivity, multimedia and more. Books will no longer be static, but dynamic. Where books were once published and sold as discrete editions, we may even see a model where readers subscribe to receive updates, or where readers pay extra to received or access updates to the book as they are published or pushed from the cloud. This would be especially useful for reference texts of all kinds.
And that library in your town? It’s about to change. Instead of a musty building containing stacks of books, the library of the future might be virtual, accessible on your tablet from anywhere, with all content served from the cloud.
It’s not just the device. It’s the world the device will deliver, how we will shop for books and access the content.
Buckle your seatbelts, kids. The world will change tomorrow morning.
And yet again apple!
I like the smell of my old books…hopefully the iPad will smell like that..
this is the REAL Christmas every year….
Doesn’t sound right. I would have guessed Apple would sell books at $9.99 or less.
“I can feel it coming in the air tonight, Oh Lord
I’ve been waiting for this moment, all my life, Oh Lord
Can you feel it coming in the air tonight, Oh Lord, Oh Lord”
(Phil Collins)
Ok, I admit it… I’ve sipped the kool-aid, and tonight I’m all tingly with geekish anticipation.
But seriously fellow Mac-enthusiasts, I’ve got this weird anticipatory nervousness tonight. It’s almost like an expectant father waiting for a child to be born…. will it be healthy? will I fall in love with it?
Part of the problem is something that has been heavily commented on already — expectations are set so high that it’s hard to imagine a single product that can live up to them. Steve doesn’t just have to “hit it out of the park”, he’s got to hit it “off the planet”.
I wonder how videos will work on there. We’ll probably have to encode our collections to a new resolution for the tablet. That part will be a pain in the ass.
How long before Apple dominates all digital content distribution and the DoJ starts breathing down its neck?
Apple Ink will offset the publishing business to the relief of flagging media companies desperate to turn over a new leaf by setting a new tone, foiling adversity on demand with xero risk and by pressing for flexibility for the best resolution.
Yes, Leave all those (HP/Windoze) Crap on the Cutting room Floor Come Tomorrow.
Happy new year 2u (Monkeyboy),
“May u Stay as the CEO of (MicroCrap) Forever”
So, how about the book publishers subsidizing the Apple Tablet?
The Kindle was only giving the publishers 50%?!?!? If I was a publisher, I dump them and concentrate on where the real money will be, Apple.
“I like the smell of my old books…hopefully the iPad will smell like that..”
Smear vanillin, aromatic anisol, benzaldehyde and a few terpene compounds on your upper lip before you use your tablet.
there is definitely great potential in the college textbook market. i taught a course last fall where the required text was $150 but a pretty useable e-version was available for about half that. If a student could take advantage of those savings for 1 or 2 courses per semester, a tablet could pay for itself over a college career. e-texts can already be accessed by laptop, but i suspect the interactivity and versatility of a tablet will add value.
Still, old-fashioned book-sharing will keep hard-copies around for awhile until tablet prices drop enough — i doubt students would be quick to share tablets as readily as they swap/share books. And until these things are cheap enough for everyone in a family to have his/her own, having lots of books around has the advantage of simultaneous use.
Dell is working overtime on a clone:
I wonder how much Amazon takes of the 9.99? Apple wants a 70/30 split which gives publishers about 10.50 on a 14.99 sale price.
It’ll be fun to watch how this shakes out.
It’s more than just a digital media device. With the larger screen the tiny piano app on the iPhone can now be a real sophisticated touch keyboards instrument. It can be any digitally designable device and with insane multi-level graphical UI model.
I’m sure Dell and Microsoft and HP are warming up the copiers already, but the problem is they don’t have Mac OS. That’s why it was essential to kill off Psysters.
And, with a pluggable extension device, it might even create the smell of old books for ya…
@ Ampar:
Unfortunately Dell is 3,500 years late on those prototypes, and they can’t beat the partnership Apple has already inked, “You shall love the Jesus Tablet with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”
The first two prototypes had some durability issues, but Moses quickly had new models drawn up.
Students will save thousands during their university time by not having to buy yellow hi-liters.
To GRANDxADMIRAL:
I prefer TeslaTablet. Nikola was robbed of his place in history.
I can see a Harry Potter-type effect on all the tablet’s ebooks: 3D and full of motion! Can’t WAIT to download Madonna’s “Sex”!
Wait—on second thought…
“For example, Sarah Palin’s recent memoir, ‘Going Rogue,’
hahahahahah, oh my sides, hahahahahahaha, this douchebag has a memoir out??? hahahahaahaha, that’s freakin’ hilarious, hahahahaha, who wrote it, surely not her or Todd, oh my sides.
Anyone remember how folks like Charles Dickens made a living? They serialized their books (which is why his chapters are generally short) and published them weekly in a paper–then, when the book was done, they packaged the whole thing up and sold it as a book.
If we do start getting “dynamic books,” I’d guess that this serialization might make a comeback. You subscribe to a book (or pay for one chapter at a time if you prefer), and you get weekly updates with new chapters. Then when it’s done, you have an entire book that you could re-read later if you wanted.
Give away the first couple of weeks (like the current sample chapters), and make it easy to “one click” to subscribe to the serialized book, and authors have a great way to generate revenue as they write, rather than after it’s all over…. _and_ publishers don’t have to lay out huge advances either, on the hopes the book will eventually sell.
Sounds like a win-win-win situation to me!
The first thing I’m going to do is watch the James O’Keefe you tube video of himself and his bros’ bugging Mary Landrieu’s office. Then I’ll watch the you tube video of him making friends with all of his cell block mates, you know, the folks that ACORN helped out. HAHAHAHAHAHA, it just gets better and better.
“tablet could rewrite publishing business”…
Does anybody in the publishing business ‘write’ anymore?!
No books? Where will my silverfish live?
“For example, Sarah Palin’s recent memoir, ‘Going Rogue,'”
Is that like “going commando” maybe?
Local governments – “Stop putting money into bricks and mortar libraries”.
“For example, Sarah Palin’s recent memoir, ‘Going Rogue,'”
SB – “Going Rouge.” Lipstick on a pitbull. Go Sarah in 2012.
@John,
If I remember correctly, a few years ago Stephen King actually tried something like you suggest and it flopped miserably. So badly that, last I heard, he didn’t even finish the story.
FWIW, I think the idea is terrific, but I’m just not sure it would go over well with today’s readers.
But who knows? Maybe all it will take is just the right author to make it popular again.
“I like the smell of my old books…”
That reminds me of an episode of Star Trek, the one with the lawyer and his room full of books.
You have a predilection for the obvious.
@ John & leodavinci
That’s awesome!
And on an iphone apps-style model, people could write their own stuff and Apple would publish direct. 1000’s of downloads of a $0.99 bestseller. Get typing!
Haha, imagine free market, and the gov. sets the prices, taking 30% tax away – great for the customers! No “Steve-Jobs-communist” tea-party comments yet to be found here…
Now- why would I pay $13-15 for a book when Amazon would have same said book for 10.
Why?
I would not pay $13 + for an eBook novel when I can get the classics for free and many pulp fiction books for $5 or less on market stalls.
Anything more than $10 is of little interest to me.
@DataDude
I know what you mean. When my niece was born, all I could think over and over was ‘Oh, God, I hope it’s not glossy…’
What a frickin joke. Greed. No thanks. I’ll continue to get books the same way I always do. I’ll check them out from my local public library.
If you don’t want to pay for quality …. then don’t buy Apple products.
If you want cheap …. and that’s all .. you can prepare to kiss your job good bye .. and live in a Wal Mart world.
won’t you cheapies ever learn .. there are some things worth paying for … like your country, your job and the well being of your neighbour?