Apple iPad deal pushes another publisher to renegotiate with Amazon - Page 2

Yes, because the app store is driven by large software houses and there is no indie participation in either the App store or indie bands on iTunes.


And there are literally tens of millions of authors that simply suck. The last thing I want to do is wade through a virtual slush pile. I guess it works for some folks as Harper Collin's Authonomy has produced a couple books.

We should see some new small publishers that just do ebooks on iBook.


Or you could self publish on Amazon...so there's no reason that Apple wont tap into the same thing at some point. It may take a little while to organize but they or someone will do it.


Sure. So the discount off the hardback is small and not large for not being paper. The costs are in editing, proofing, marketing, etc.


Yes, you should wonder because Apple has absolutely no track record on this issue. None. Complete blank slate.

While I'm on your side, there are a whole bunch of people out there who are apparently not tired of big business. Nearly half of Americans consistently vote for politicians who hand more and more power to big business. *cough* McCain / Net Neutrality / SCOTUS / Corporate Campaign Contributions *cough*

I guess the question is could they have done the same thing by simply charging $20 wholesale for the ebook on launch and see if Amazon was willing to eat THAT much of a loss to keep the $9.99 price point as oppose to pushing the agency model.

The wholesale model might have worked if Amazon was willing to not sell stuff at a loss to kill ebook competitors. Publishers aren't stupid...they knew Amazon was already a bully and if Amazon managed to dominate the ebook market they'd have been screwed.

I dunno.

Perhaps he wants publishers to stay in business? Just a thought. In the long run I suspect the consumers will win as prices of books digitally distributed are bound to be far less than printing ... and look at all the trees that will be spared

To be fair to that half ... they are told to do this by one line catch phrases repeated ad nauseam and sent around in e-mails and reinforced by Fox News ... what do you expect them to do ... think?

And the Mona Lisa has only about $20 of production costs... they should sell it for $50! THAT is a profit margin!

If the price is too high for you, don't buy it. Or, write your own book and make out like a bandit like these publishers are doing. Or, STFU.

Excellent comment, anantksundaram, about the digital photos compared to film....I can remember the discourse about CD music quality vs. MP3's quality...and now downloaded HD movies vs. DVD's.

I think there is a definite sea change here that as you say will take some time to shake out. But the writing is on the wall!

If I said to my father (a former CEO-very smart businessman) I want to publish a magazine on paper and ship them using people, trucks, mideast oil, to all the supermarkets in America and again then 3 weeks later pick up 99% of them using people, trucks, mideast oil, because they haven't sold and either recycle them using people, mideast oil, bleach and water or just add them to the landfill. He would say, I don't care how much you make on the advertising, it's a very 'wasteful' business model and in that respect doomed.

That's why I like the iPad and dislike the publishers....they better get on board quick like.

Save us your desperate political tripe please.

Hey, my posts are pretty 'terrific insights' too!

Quit hijacking the thread.

My guess is Steve Jobs is going to enable RENTING of e-books on the iPad.


This is why the publishers need a higher price shift for purchasing.


Steve plans on selling iPads to schools en massé, instead of students carrying a bunch of heavy books around, they will have a thin iPad in their notebooks with will be uploaded with books rented by schools, cheaper than purchasing the books.

Also newspapers and other forms of disposable media.

The publishers save 50% of their costs with e-books over traditional books and the schools will save money as they can get volume licensing.

Steve can sell a lot of iPads. Everyone wins.

Write your own books and you can sell them for $1.99 if you wish. You have absolutely no right to tell others what to sell their hard work for.


GET IT THROUGH YOUR HEAD: this is not an across the board price increase. Under the old system, all books were $9.99. Under the new system, the publisher sets the price for what they think they're worth. Some will be much less than $9.99 (I've heard $5 or 6) and some will be more. That's the way books (and everything else is priced). Do you expect to walk into a car dealer and have all the cars priced the same?


I agree 100%. People who think things should be free can go out and create their own intellectual property and give it away. I have a great deal of respect for the people who contribute free software and donate their time to make the world a better place. Where I draw the line is when they start to demand that EVERYONE do the same thing.


Hint: in a free market, prices sometimes go up and sometimes go down. Amazon was artificially forcing prices down by selling some items below cost. That's not sustainable. What Apple is driving is a free market - publishers can choose how to price their own product rather than having Amazon dictate that everyone must charge the same.

AND SOME PRICES WILL BE LESS THAN $9.99 under the new system.



I see. So the publishers are greedy because they want to be paid for their work? I suppose you're greedy because you make your employer pay you, right? And you think it's OK to steal something because you don't want to pay what the seller charges? I'm just curious - what bizarre reasoning justifies this position? After all, I assume that you wouldn't think you could steal a Ferrari just because it's 'too expensive'. What type of warped mind makes you think it's OK to steal ANYTHING just because you don't like the price?

Your entire premise is wrong, anyway. First, even under the new prices, the eBooks will be less than paper books. Macmillan is proposing $12.99 to $14.99 for newly released best sellers and prices as low as $5 or 6. In the book store, best sellers list for $24.99 to $29.99 and are typically discounted to the $20 level. The bulk of books are around $14.99 hardcover and $8-10 paperback. So Macmillan's prices ARE less than the paper copy.

I also disagree with your premise that the electronic version is worth less than the paper version. Value has nothing to do with cost. If it did, I'd go out and buy a bunch of paint and paint a big canvas. By your logic, it should be worth more than the Mona LIsa because I have more paint in mine. For some people, the electronic version has greater value than the paper version. When I travel, it will save me 5-10 pounds of weight (I usually carry several books for international flights). I could theoretically get rid of the overflowing bookcases in my living room. Today, I regularly give stacks of books away because I have no where to store them. With eBooks, I can keep my books forever without wasting space. It's just inane to say that eBooks are a ripoff because they are set at a certain price. YOU may see them that way, but lots of others don't.

Does anyone else think that the eBook trend is a very dangerous one with the current grey area surrounding digital media? Especially since the bought and sold politicians are constantly handing more and more power over content to the media companies.

What am I talking about?

Why literacy and social classes of course.

Go to any decent sized town in the US and you will likely find a second hand book store where a person can buy a used book for a fraction of the cost of the new book. This has setup an entire system where the more affluent people in the US can and will buy a new book, read it, and then sell that book. This book can then be bought by the less fortunate members of our society for a fraction of the original price and read. Then possibly resold again to the used book store. This system allows for the publishers to make their money on the initial sale and allows for the poorer members of our society to afford to access to printed materials, thus helping our literacy rates. All of this is possible because of the First-sale Doctrine. The current cluster F' that is digital media completely violates the first-sale doctrine because the idiots in Washington have been told by the media companies that digital media isn't a sale but a license. I don't think I need to expand on what I think of this steaming pile of...

So, what does this "revolution" bring us? It brings us a widening gap between the classes of this country. The media companies don't give a crap. Hell they are all for destroying the second hand market, it means more money for them. Maybe. It means that only the well to do will be able to afford the best educations. It means nothing good for our society.

I have heard a few comments on why this won't happen. However, I don't buy them as true cures.

First, is libraries. What exactly are libraries going to loan out? Will they be allowed to loan out digital copies of books that they purchase? LOL! Yeah right, as if the media companies won't running screaming to their lawyers about suing the libraries for violating the DMCA or some such other unconstitutional law to stop those filthy pirates from distributing their digital content.

Second, is real hard bound books. Um... have you heard of economics? As the publishers move to eBooks because they can charge the same amount for an eBook as a real book, but don't have to pay for printing, handling, shipping, storing, and everything else that cost a lot of money when you are dealing with a real product. The real books will thus be produced in smaller quantities. This means that their price will go up. Thus, those real books will again get more expensive, and therefore when a person actually buys a real book it will be to keep it, not to sell it later. Thus, this will dry up the second hand market for books as well, and will similarly put real books further out of reach of the poorer people.

So, what is the solution? Don't go to eBooks, which is not a good solution, in my opinion. Make the laws recognize that when a consumer buys a digital copy of a work, that they own that copy of the work, just as they would have owned a hard copy. This means that the First-sale doctrine still applies and thus after I purchase that eBook and read it I can then turn around and sell it to someone else.

Our copyright laws are way out of date. In fact, the very name just goes to show how out of touch they are. Copying something is not the issue, and really never has been. If in the 1940s someone had taken The Grapes of Wrath, took the time to typeset the whole book and then buy the paper, ink, and printing press and produced a million books and set them in a warehouse and then burned them all the publisher would not have been harmed. Despite the fact that millions of unauthorized copies had been made.

It is the distribution of said copies that is the issue. If I purchase a book, I have paid the publisher for that work. If I make a thousand copies on my hard drive but never distribute them, what have I done to hurt the publisher or the author? Nothing. If I were to distribute those thousand copies then I have increased the available copies for consumption and have interfered with their distribution rights, and that should be illegal. Copying is not the issue.

I think we agree. It's just so important to point out that cost based pricing vs value for the customer really creates the interesting margins. Apple as well as all publishers knows this. It's the heart of their business. Of course they will make sure they push costs lower. After that's it for the customers to place our bucks where we find the value.

Print has one problem here though: Each book will only come thru one publisher. There is no competition on JK Rawlings books about Harry Potter. Unless you settle for a completely different book. But that's besides the point in this discussion!

What are you talking about?

He can price it at what he want's but at the end of the day the power is with the consumer. The free market will dictate whether the prices are fair or not. Always remember that.

Most of that rise is because of the draconian, 'so 20th century', IP laws. So, to be honest, the blame should not be put on the distributors (Apple, publishers) alone but on the greedy writers and their associations. Followed the iTunes/Beatles saga? Dhani Harrison, a lazy son of John and Paul's friend who happened to play a guitar, is the leading face of that farce ... Ridiculous.

All this will only result in more illegal downloads. While people (including me) were somewhat affraid of cracking an iPhone (especially as it was tied to an operator), there will be much less resistance to cracking an iPad. Torrents will flourish. What goes around, comes around.

You raise a number of good points. The biggest concern is libraries, but I suspect that will be solved by evolution in the interpretation of copyright laws and licenses. Even today, libraries have slightly different rules than individuals (you could not, for example, charge someone money to read your books, but libraries can). I think it's a near certainty that licenses will either explicitly or implicitly allow libraries to circulate eBooks. At that point, it becomes an issue of how to get a cheap eBook reader into the hands of people who can't afford one. I'm not sure how that's going to work out--maybe they will rent you an eBook reader or perhaps there's a secure way to allow you to read on your computer (of course, many poor don't have a computer, so that's still a problem). Clearly, that issue needs to be addressed.

I think the bigger issue involves availability of work. As it is, new and unknown authors find it almost impossible to get published for the first time. Switching to eBooks will reduce the volume of paper books, making the cost even greater for the publisher. In theory, it would be less expensive for the publisher to publish eBooks, but in practice, the cost difference is small - and the selling price for eBooks will be lower, as well. I could picture a lot of marginal authors being pushed out of the business.

OTOH, eBooks makes it very inexpensive for authors to self-publish or for a cut-rate publisher to enter the business and INCREASE the number of authors available. If this goes too far, the difficulty of weeding through the junk may become a problem. So what happens? Fewer authors published because of costs? More authors published because of self-publishing? Massive increase of the number of authors created by low cost of entry? Only time will tell.


If you'd read what I was responding to, I was clearly responding to someone who felt that they had the right to dictate what price eBooks should be sold for.

I'm in accord with your assessment.

You're wrong, fanboy.

Dude, both Amazon and Apple can set what ever prices they want. Publishers can ask whatever prices they want and complain about Appple's or Amazon's policies.
Readers have RIGHT to complain about this price hike and you can spare us your masohisctic attitude towards Apple or "industry".

Really? So you DO have the right to dictate what price authors can list their books for? Who died and left you boss?

I realize, of course, that you have the right to choose not to buy if you think it's too high, but that's not what you suggested. You said "Best sellers should be $9.99. Everything else should be $6.99 for novels, and $4.99 for novellas." - and you have no right to dictate that.

The higher prices of books may well just be evidence of competition at work.

Seeing that Amazon forced prices down and simultaneously forced the publishers to take a very small cut of their own content, it seems that it was Amazon that had monopoly control and used it to force bad deals onto the publishers - the guys that take all the risk when a book fails to sell. Publishers were forced to accept a smaller slice of a smaller pie, in terms of price. Amazon also wanted to force the publishers to hand over their rights as publishers to Amazon, when all Amazon does is act as a retailer.

Now that Apple is here, the publishers feel they have *choice* and can demand that they receive a bigger slice of the profits from their own efforts and risk. Also in the case of MacMillan they can now tell Amazon that Amazon is just a retailer - which is correct and why MacMillan's CEO referred to Amazon as a 'customer' in his letter to authors.

Prices will rise because Amazon is no longer able to force publishers to assist in low price dumping for the sake of Amazon's market share. Customers may sometimes benefit from dumping, but it doesn't make it fair. We will only know the true market price for an eBook a year from now when the competition has bedded in.

No. You're wrong that I'm dictating prices. I'm saying the prices need to be this way to get "users" (meaning the majority) buying books. At $13 to $15 it will be niche. That's all I'm saying.

You're basically saying: "How dare you dictate their prices?"

Get a clue.

Apparently you know nothing whatsoever about Apple and Steve Jobs (your relentless posting to AppleInsider nothwithstanding.)

Jobs hates the idea of renting anything. You would know that if you followed the industry. He has resisted renting/subscribing music ever since he opened the iTunes Store. Or hadn't you noticed?


Need? Hardly. Want? Sure. We all want more money. Deserve it? As in they should get more money for all the money they're saving from having to print and ship physical books? Riiiight.

Don't be desperate.

That's not what you said. You set what the prices need to be. That's not your prerogative.

You can say that you don't think they'll sell at $13, but you didn't say that.

Frankly, if people are willing to pay $25 for a hard cover best seller, I don't see that $15 for a more convenient format is out of line. People pay $8-10 for a paperback, so the proposed $5 to 6 for an eBook is also quite reasonable.

I just don't get the whining from people like you who spend their whole life complaining about everything Apple does and insisting that everything has to be free or nearly free.

Jesus man will you shut up, I know I have no control over the prices are. I'm saying until they are cheaper they won't take off. Just my opinion on the bloody prices, get over it.

That's simply too much money for a digital file, especially a locked-down one. If they want to go the iTunes Plus route and charge $9.99 for a DRM'd file and $12.99 for an unlocked ePub file, now we may be getting somewhere.

Don't forget that on the iPad, you're paying extra for the connection on top of the ebook price. On the Kindle, the price of the connection is built into the price of the ebook.

Only if you use 3G. I have WiFi at home and there are a few zillion WiFi locations where you con't have to pay for the connection. It's your choice which to use.

As for the price, many (perhaps most) books will have a LOWER price with the new pricing structure than with Amazon's "$9.99 for everything" structure. The ones that will be more than $9.99 will be the newest best sellers - which are $25-30 in a book store. Frankly, I don't think it's an unfair price at all - 1/2 the price for all of the content and none of the pollution.

""mknopp....Does anyone else think that the eBook trend is a very dangerous one with the current grey area surrounding digital media? Especially since the bought and sold politicians are constantly handing more and more power over content to the media companies.

What am I talking about?

Why literacy and social classes of course.

Go to any decent sized town in the US and you will likely find a second hand book store where a person can buy a used book for a fraction of the cost of the new book. This has setup an entire system where the more affluent people in the US can and will buy a new book, read it, and then sell that book. This book can then be bought by the less fortunate members of our society for a fraction of the original price and read. Then possibly resold again to the used book store. This system allows for the publishers to make their money on the initial sale and allows for the poorer members of our society to afford to access to printed materials, thus helping our literacy rates. All of this is possible because of the First-sale Doctrine. The current cluster F' that is digital media completely violates the first-sale doctrine because the idiots in Washington have been told by the media companies that digital media isn't a sale but a license. I don't think I need to expand on what I think of this steaming pile of... "-----------------------------------

I keep saying the same thing but its not popular I can only conclude that most of the people here have some (profit) interest in this matter either directly or indirectly.
If everyone is talking about fiction then ok you charge what you want but education is a different matter. Some books are essential reading and to have these at the mercy of content distributors/providers is lunacy.

Its quite common that one member of the family passes on his school/college books to his younger brother/sister.

What happens if I want to change the media-reader or just want to see it on my computer?

I loan most of the books I buy to my nearest family and when I am finished with them I hand them over to non profit organizations, Churches etc. Believe it or not some people can not afford to buy books.

All this good will end in the name of GREED...

I've already said that's a legitimate concern. So what is your solution?

Ban eBooks (as well as any future inventions ever invented)?

The same thing was true if every invention ever created. Darn those cars. Poor people won't be able to afford them and they won't be able to get where they need to go. Electric lights should never have been allowed - only the rich could afford them and the poor people couldn't study their books after dark. Airplanes? Horrendous. Think about how it will allow wealthy people to see the world and earn more money. CDs? No way. Lots of people had talking books on 8-track and they won't be able to use them anymore.

This has the POTENTIAL to greatly INCREASE accessibility of reading material for people around the world. But whether it does or not will be determined by whether people can make money that way. Almost every major development in the history of the world was driven directly or indirectly by the profit motive. Trying to take profit out of the picture will do nothing to further the status of the poor.

Way to go, Steve. Thanks fer nothing.

Would you read the articles?

Macmillan will be REDUCING the price of many books and increasing just the newest best sellers. There's absolutely no way of knowing if the average will go up or down, but assuming that more people buy the cheaper books, it wouldn't surprise me if the average goes DOWN.

The difference is that instead of Amazon keeping 70%*, the publisher will keep 70%, so even if the price drops, they can make more money.

*Yes, I'm aware of Amazon's new proposal to let the publisher keep up to 70%, but that's mostly a scam. In order to keep 70%, you have to jump through hoops and basically turn all your intellectual property over to Amazon. Few, if any, publishers would do that.

I personally just love to see the zombies come racing to the defense of Apple no matter what the issue is... Apple defending the $.99 pricing on iTunes (Yea!! Apple is looking out of us!) Apple denouncing the $9.99 ebook pricing (Yea! Apple standing up for the corporate well being of destitute publishers bullied by those nasties @ Amazon!!!)

Wheee

I don't think that is an accurate statement. We do not want it for free, we want a fair price and we don't feel those are fair prices. If the digital variant is two dollars less than the print one, I'll buy the print of the book even though I prefer to read on my phone. The print versions can be shared with friends, family and I don't loose them when I change readers, etc. Two bucks is not worth it to me. Granted, the 14.99 books are new releases which cost more in the print world, but I only buy books once they hit paperback. I read to much to pay the "new release" tax.

This is terrible for consumers. Thanks Steve. This is how you are going to promote reading?

On the one hand there's the iPad and the iBooks to promote accessibility to reading material. And on the other hand, thanks to Apple's efforts e-books prices will be going up dramatically this year. Some innovation. At least with music, Apple brought price down.

Exactly. These guys are the type of people who give Mac users a bad name. Rationale only when it doesn't upset the living organism that is Apple Inc. It's weird at the least, and probably despicable too.

Revised Edit

Have you read the terms? Here's the list that I could find:

• Distribution costs are now paid by the publisher
• Books must sell for between $2.99 and $9.99 and must be priced at least 20% lower than a comparable physical copy of the book.
• The book must support Kindle features, including text-to-speech.
• This will only be available for books that are in-copyright and only for those sold in the US.

Exactly which of these makes publishers surrender their IP to Amazon? The 2nd and 3rd are actually good for consumers.

Sorry, but I can't see how Apple's entry into the eBook business is anything but a negative for consumers. Apple couldn't get the same contracts that Amazon did and had to accept what the publishers wanted. In turn, the publishers get to use their contract with Apple to force Amazon into a new contract with higher prices. Apple wins by getting to say that their prices are the same as Amazon's and consumers lose by having to pay higher prices.

Then you didn't look hard enough. That figure applies only to authors - not publishers. And the fine print requires the author to give up most of their publication rights. They can not license it to anyone else for less than Amazon pays. And they lose some of their distribution rights.