Amazon and the Kindle was the first shoe dropping, Apple entering the market is the second. Mayhem to follow (in a good way).

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

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.