Well you can’t buy a device, there are no e-books on sale through the app store and it was only announced three days ago but as predicted Apple’s iPad has already shaken up digital publishing.
On Friday Amazon removed all books by publisher Macmillan – physical and digital – in a move industry insiders say is the culmination of an ongoing dispute over the price the retailing giant was charging customers for e-books on the Kindle. Macmillan wanted to set its own price (around $15) for e-books but Amazon had them locked in at a maximum of $9.99. That disagreement means you can’t currently buy any books from one of the world’s biggest publishers directly from Amazon.
Funnily enough Macmillan is one of the big publishers signing up to the Apple e-book store right from the start. And what’s the price Apple is letting Macmillan charge for an e-book? The magical $15.
While the New York Times rightly says there may be some anti-trust issues if Macmillan’s books went on sale through one of the stores and not the other, there’s still a bit over a month before Apple’s e-book store opens for business. My guess is that it’s Macmillan flexing its muscle now there’s another giant player in the market. Plenty of time for further negotiations.
I’m even more convinced now that the iPad as an e-book reader is a fifth order issue when it comes to digital publishing. All the uber-geeks are complaining because it doesn’t do this or it doesn’t do that. But this device is not designed to replace your laptop. It’s a device to let you consume digital media easily. And it does that well. I’m sure it will make a very good e-book reader but we’ve got plenty of them already.
While it could be months (or years) before Australians will be able to buy e-books from Apple, the impact across the digital publishing industry is likely to be felt much sooner.
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While I believe that Apple’s tactics are a little foolish, there’s nada saying that these providers must do business with Apple. It’s Apple’s game, and if you need to work in it (as a provider OR as a consumer), you’re going to have to execute by their silly rules. I personally believe it is fun trying to dig up the rumours and news leaks and guess what Apple will do next. Its even more fun going back and looking at those leaks and rumours after the merchandise announcement to ascertain just how close they are.
For my mind the iPad doesn’t matter. It will sell well as a digital consumption device and some people will buy it as an e-reader. But it’s Apple in the e-book market that interests me most.
Amazon and the Kindle was the first shoe dropping, Apple entering the market is the second. Mayhem to follow (in a good way).
Howdy,
I seem to have been appointed as the generic iPad defender so I’ll steer away from that this time and defend macmillian.
My problem with Amazon’s move is their complete cheek in claiming they want to restrict books to $10 on their Kindle store.
The most expensive e-book in the Kindle store (from a really quick search) is $322 for the World Bank’s Global Development Finance 2008.
You can pick up Robert Woof’s William Wordsworth: The Critical Heritage, Volume One 1793-1820 for a meager $242 (a saving of $58 according to Amazon). In terms of fiction fiction, I can pick up a collection of Edward Longo’s Short Stories with a supernatural flavour for a mere $66.95.
Sure these are extreme examples (and there no macmillian titles in their cause I can’t see them any more).
Some e-books would be cheaper. Some would be more expensive. Much like it is now.
As Macmillian explained in response to their Amazon banning – “Under the agency model, we will sell the digital editions of our books to consumers through our retailers. Our retailers will act as our agents and will take a 30% commission (the standard split today for many digital media businesses). The price will be set the price for each book individually. Our plan is to price the digital edition of most adult trade books in a price range from $14.99 to $5.99. At first release, concurrent with a hardcover, most titles will be priced between $14.99 and $12.99. E books will almost always appear day on date with the physical edition. Pricing will be dynamic over time.”
Which, to me at least, seems to be a fairly standard business model.
And as demonstrated in the examples above, Amazon does have titles priced way above the supposed $10 cap they want for Macmillian.
It is easy to believe that Amazon’s snit has nothing to do the pricing structure suggested by Macmillian and everything to do with a fear of Apple entering the field of e-publishing.
And the most curious thing about the whole debate is that the iPad is not even an e-Reader. It is a multi-purpose device that reads e-books.
Which to me is a core distinction. If I were Amazon I would be focussing on this (Want a true e-reading experience – get a Kindle. Books, we do them).
Cheers,
Damon
They’re nice screens.
I think we’ll continue to see a shakeup over the next few years while the technology matures further. But I’d love to see someone hack the iPad and put a screen like this on the front of it instead of the LCD.
Have you seen the new displays Pixel Qi has come out with? They work as either a standard LCD or an e-ink display. And they’re higher resolution than the Kindle. The first tablets should be coming out this summer.
Yeah, the LCD and the battery life will be an issue for many dedicated e-book readers. I suspect there will be a dedicated but (comparatively) small market for e-book only readers going forward. They’ll sell to enough people and many other readers will be happy reading on their smartphone or on something like the iPad.
My big issue with the iPad as far as an ereader goes is its lack of epaper technology. That is a deal-breaker for me. If I wanted to read ebooks on an LCD screen (and get severe eye strain), I’d just use my MacBook. I think most serious readers will find the iPad’s display to be an issue…