Apple's January media event in NYC to reportedly focus on iBooks, publishing

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  • Reply 21 of 31
    shogunshogun Posts: 362member
    Self-publishing would be great for many authors. It becomes difficult for consumers, though. How do they wade through the crappy content to find the good stuff?



    As for obstacles in the way, the major one would be the publishing houses themselves. They don't look too kindly on self-publishing. They could pull their support of iBooks, or more likely start dragging heels and making things more difficult for Apple in their deal-making.



    An interesting "one more thing", while usually hardware related, would be iBooks for the Mac.
  • Reply 22 of 31
    crowleycrowley Posts: 10,453member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by DaveMcM76 View Post


    This is one big advantage amazon / kindle has over iBooks at the moment - desktop readers so you have far more choice about when / where you consume your books. This is especially true with their recent web based "cloud reader" which means you can log into your amazon account on pretty much any pc/mac/tablet anywhere in the world and pick up on your reading without even installing anything...



    Does anyone actually do that? It might be useful in the odd case when the Kindle/iPad runs out of juice; though I suspect the majority would wait until it had recharged.
  • Reply 23 of 31
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Twelve View Post


    I've been working on an iBook, which leaves me wondering why there are so few titles that use all that it can do?



    1) More people buy print (still) than ebooks. That will change, but it hasn't yet.



    2) Big publishers (with the resources to produce more-interactive ebooks) not yet fully on board re ebooks. (This will change as well.)



    Meanwhile, there's an opportunity for the aggressive entrepreneur in this space.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by asdasd View Post


    Yeah, lets not sell content.



    Don't you think that ship has sailed? In fact, it's been to the moon and back. Where have you been?
  • Reply 24 of 31
    jragostajragosta Posts: 10,473member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by asdasd View Post


    Yeah, lets not sell content.



    The real trick here would be to reduce the commission, the % taken per book. That could destroy Amazon. They also need more books.



    Yep. "We're going to reduce our commission from 30% to 20%" would do more to harm Amazon than anything that Apple could do with their iPad. Suddenly, Amazon would be unable to sell the Fire for $199 because media sales wouldn't be sufficient to subsidize it.



    The loss in revenues would be too small to have much impact on Apple. And with the new data center in NC, their costs have probably dropped (since they're doing it themselves rather than paying someone), so it might not hurt Apple at all.
  • Reply 25 of 31
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,176member
    I'll be surprised if Apple attempts any changes to the "agency model" they arranged with the publishers. They're currently being investigated in both the US and Europe for uncompetitive practices/collusion regarding eBooks pricing.



    I'd expect new features rather than pricing changes. Just another opinion of course, without anything to back it up.





    EDIT: . . . unless they're abandoning agency pricing altogether.
  • Reply 26 of 31
    asdasdasdasd Posts: 5,686member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jragosta View Post


    Yep. "We're going to reduce our commission from 30% to 20%" would do more to harm Amazon than anything that Apple could do with their iPad. Suddenly, Amazon would be unable to sell the Fire for $199 because media sales wouldn't be sufficient to subsidize it.



    The loss in revenues would be too small to have much impact on Apple. And with the new data center in NC, their costs have probably dropped (since they're doing it themselves rather than paying someone), so it might not hurt Apple at all.



    +1



    Apple's margins are close to 40%. Amazon's margins are at 2-3%. Amazon subsidises a hardware device to sell content. Apple could subsidise content sales to sell hardware - at least for now.



    As far as I can make out 2-3% of that profit is from the iTunes store/App store. About 1% or less is from eBooks, therefore. Why not run that at a loss?
  • Reply 27 of 31
    jragostajragosta Posts: 10,473member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by asdasd View Post


    +1



    Apple's margins are close to 40%. Amazon's margins are at 2-3%. Amazon subsidises a hardware device to sell content. Apple could subsidise content sales to sell hardware - at least for now.



    As far as I can make out 2-3% of that profit is from the iTunes store/App store. About 1% or less is from eBooks, therefore. Why not run that at a loss?



    They can't really run it at a loss - that creates legal problems. They could, however, run it at break-even.
  • Reply 28 of 31
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Twelve View Post


    I've been working on an iBook, which leaves me wondering why there are so few titles that use all that it can do? Apple released Yellow Submarine (free), which shows its use as a children's book. Yet, it's amazing how rich you can make a textbook.



    It's much more of a Safari web page archive than an ePub. There's access to Javascript, CSS animation, audio/video, read-along highlighting, document embedding, hyperlinks both to other pages and to resources on the web, fixed and dynamic formatting, font embedding.



    What authoring application are you using to create the enhanced iBook ePubs?
  • Reply 29 of 31
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Twelve View Post


    It's much more of a Safari web page archive than an ePub. There's access to Javascript, CSS animation, audio/video, read-along highlighting, document embedding, hyperlinks both to other pages and to resources on the web, fixed and dynamic formatting, font embedding.



    EPUB is actually just a collection of HTML pages with EPUB 3 being based on HTML5. In fact EPUB 3 could really be a great marketing tool for HTML5 when people can see how truly versatile the format is. :-)
  • Reply 30 of 31
    pxtpxt Posts: 683member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mrtotes View Post


    Or perhaps just a reader app for OS X/Win...



    This put me off iBooks right away and now I use the Kindle apps which do a simple job well.



    Apple seems only intermittently aware that they have an ecosystem. Every time they make an unnecessary distinction between OSX and iOS (and even iCloud), they break that. I often find myself thinking that I would give up ten fancy features in exchange for consistent access to my data.
  • Reply 31 of 31
    I have not been purchasing book on the store yet, mainly because I believe it not that much a thrill to really read more than a couple of pages on the iPhone, but I am interested what apple is going to present if they actually have a media event on this kind of stuff.
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