“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!
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” />
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”.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
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.