Amazon Pulls Book Publisher's Listings; Ebook Wars Underway? 297
As of last night, Amazon stopped listing all books from Macmillan Publishers, referring searches to other sellers instead. According to the New York Times, this is because Macmillan is one of the companies that now has an agreement to sell ebooks through Apple's new iBooks store, and asked Amazon to raise the price of their ebooks from $9.99 to $15. An industry source told the Times that the de-listing is Amazon's way of "expressing its strong disagreement" with the idea of a price hike. Gizmodo suggests this is the first volley in an Apple-Amazon ebook war. Quoting: "It feels like a repeat of the same s*** Universal Music, and later, NBC Universal pulled with iTunes, trying to counter the leverage Apple had because of iTunes' insane marketshare. Same situation here, really: Content provider wants more money/control over their content, fights with the overwhelmingly dominant, embedded service that's selling the content. Last time, everybody compromised and walked away mostly happy: Universal and NBC got more flexible pricing, iTunes got DRM-free music and more TV shows for its catalog to sell. ... The difference in this fight is that Macmillan is one of the publishers signed to deliver books for Apple's iBooks store. They have somewhere to run. And credibly. That wasn't really the case with record labels, who tried to fuel alternatives to dilute iTunes power, and failed."
Kindle v. iPad (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple is going to absolutely slaughter them on 1 through 3, maybe not 4. I'm looking forward to having another eBook reader to choose from.
Amazon dropping publishers is just an offense to me as their customer. I have no sympathy for them here. Maybe some day ePaper will deliver on its promise but for now I've given up.
Is Apple ePub DRM free? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm wondering if Apple's ePub books are DRM free? If so then folk do have somewhere to run - they can buy any one of the myriad of other e-ink readers out there.
If they have DRM that resticts users to an iPad, then it's a different story. The 1.5lb iPad with a backlit lcd screen is unlikely to be the reading choice of the masses.
Re:Kindle v. iPad (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Kindle v. iPad (Score:5, Insightful)
It's entirely reasonable. They are a corporation. He is a customer. He shouldn't care too much about what they are up to as long as they are providing him a product that he desires.
And as they say, if they aren't providing the product, they aren't providing the product.
Re:Kindle v. iPad (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Kindle v. iPad (Score:3, Insightful)
So you think the titles are too expensive, then you lambast Amazon for dropping a publisher which tried to hike their prices by 50%?
Exactly. eBooks are _already_ overpriced. Not available AND overpriced is even worse. I couldn't care less for them and I'm not even saying Amazon is entirely to blame. It seems the publishers have the upper hand, now that they can play them against Apple. waaah.
A paperback is 7 bucks (Score:5, Insightful)
No printing, distribution, warehousing, etc.
I want to pay _less_ for an ebook than a paper book, especially considering I can't easily resell an ebook.
No Kindle for me, thanks.
Re:Kindle v. iPad (Score:5, Insightful)
On the one hand, Macmillan are perfectly entitled to strike deals with whoever they want in order to get the best bang for their buck. Fair enough if they can make it work.
On the other hand, they have managed to shoot themselves in the foot with pinpoint accuracy. They have failed to consider that by pinning their products to Apple's iPad, they are (a) gambling on the success of hardware that won't be commercially available for another two months and (b) failing to realise that iBooks is limited to the US for the forseeable future, so they have casually abandoned their international market.
It seems to me that some MBA sales manager has gone charging off to the latest trendy bidder without saddling up his brains first.
Re:Seems to me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Illegally stopping sales? There is no law anywhere that says Amazon has to sell Macmillan's books. Whether it's because the prices are too high or because they just don't like the way the company smells, Amazon is perfectly within their rights to sell or not sell whatever they choose to.
Re:Kindle v. iPad (Score:5, Insightful)
I would like to remind you that the Kindle has a e-ink screen is much easier on the eyes than an LCD is.
Saying it doesn't make it true, but thank you for "reminding" me of the points I already specifically addressed. Have you actually used a Kindle in typical indoor lighting conditions for any length of time?
I'm an amusingly good test subject for this. For the last few weeks I've been reading off my Kindle almost every night by the light of a single Candle two feet behind my shoulder. I've had no eyestrain problems at all. If I did I'd light more candles, or maybe use a book light. This let's me read in a relatively dim room without bothering my sleeping wife. It's a lot more pleasant than the hours of reading I do on an LCD every day.
As compared to the iTunes skirmishes (Score:3, Insightful)
Interesting. I'm curious how this will play out relative to the iTunes defection.
I expect Apple to:
1. outsell Kindle with iPad
2. be stubborn about pricing (look at iTunes history)
The fact that Apple is not the first big mover makes this interesting, as it will be years (if ever) until they'll have the same market power in books as they did after a year of the iTunes Music Store.
With iTunes it was, from the consumer's perspective, a benevolent hegemony. With books the price pressure from Apple is upwards, and Amazon is holding the line. Though they're differentiated products - kindle is B&W e-ink, iPad is color backlit LCD.
From a strategy perspective, it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Probably won't hurt book publishers in the same way as music labels - book sales will not degrade into chapter sales in the same way that album sales degraded into single track sales.
Re:Kindle v. iPad (Score:4, Insightful)
You speak as if MacMillan pulled their offerings from the Kindle store. They didn't. Amazon delisted them from their store because (according to Amazon) Macmillan demanded higher prices.
Wether or not their books are entitled to sell at those higher prices is sortof an academic question-- I bought a new book on my Kindle last night for $15, so it's not like it's unheardof or anything. Since Amazon's explanation of their pricing issue makes no sense, the only reason for them delisting the books that remains is that Amazon is trying strongarm people that try to sell thru the iBook store. You're seeing Amazon get pissed because Macmillan DARES try to sell it's books thru another ebook store that doesn't suck.
Re:Kindle v. iPad (Score:2, Insightful)
Kindle supports DRM-free formats just fine. (Score:2, Insightful)
I guess they'll mod up anyone these days.
Re:Good. Fuck 'em. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:My big question is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes. I would be dumbstruck if they didn't. The ONLY reason they would leave it, is if every book on the Kindle app was the exact same price as the ones on the iBook, and even then, they'd only do it to not piss off the people who got books from Amazon, heh, and even then, I doubt they'd keep it for long.
Re:Is Apple ePub DRM free? (Score:5, Insightful)
If only Steve Jobs had some influence with movie studios like Pixar, he could persuade them to make their movies available DRM-free...
Re:Kindle v. iPad (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Kindle v. iPad (Score:3, Insightful)
At least the Kindle is really good at one important thing, reading books. What is the iPad really good at? I've long thought tablets were useless; just laptops without keyboards. And now Apple gives us another tablet which, moreover, is limited to the applications available only through Apple, and that's what's supposed to make tablets finally work!?
Re:Is Apple ePub DRM free? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yup, they're *so* anti-DRM that they chose to restrict application sales on the iPhone/iPod Touch to iTunes, with mandatory DRM even for developers who don't want it and no way to distribute or install outside of their proprietary methods.
Apple were happy to go anti-DRM for a bit of geek cred once iTunes and the iPod were both already dominant and they no longer had to rely on technological lock-in. When it gives them more control they're all for it. Ars [arstechnica.com] have an article that sums up the iPad's restrictions on freedom.
Your argument that Apple succeeding with a closed DRM'd model forced open music is also counter-intuitive - their leverage over the music industry may have hastened DRM-free music, but that was at best an unintended side effect. Indeed, it's possible that without the success of iTunes the industry would never have bothered shoving DRM on us and we'd have seen a natural progression from CDs (although that may be a bit optimistic...)
Re:Can someone explain to me why people buy this c (Score:2, Insightful)
What's wrong with real books?
Here we have yet another example of "I don't have an interest in a product, so obviously anyone who does must be stupid." Since several million people (myself included) were interested enough in a Kindle to pay several hundred dollars for one and you don't understand why, that obviously means all those people must be stupid. Indeed, whenever *YOU* don't understand something, that means someone *ELSE* must be stupid. Yep.
I have a personal library of several thousand books and I designed my custom-built house specifically to have a library room.
I also bought a Kindle and am very pleased with it. I bought it before going on a 2-week cruise last summer. If you can't think of what is wrong with lugging several dozen "real books" along with you on a trip, then I don't think I'm up to educating you. I worked pretty hard to keep my luggage down to something that was practical to lug through, for example, the London underground. It wouldn't have taken very many books to blow that.
Re:Price at Apple store? (Score:4, Insightful)
stop feeding the trolls (Score:4, Insightful)
15 bucks may seem OK to you, that's your business, but you also brought it up in a commentary forum, so I will comment. From my perspective, taking a longer range view of technology and society and business, you are encouraging them to keep trying to get 10,000% (whatever, some huge amount way over real production and delivery costs) markup prices for digital copies of stuff. I think that's shortsighted. I guess you make fair pay, but what about the rest of the planet for whom 15 bucks is a very considerable sum? Tough crap for those people?
You're force feeding the digital replicator tech monopolist trolls WAY too much there, bragging about it, and helping screw it up for the rest of the planet in the future by keeping prices just way way too high for these digital products. forced artificial scarcity. Just seems dumb to me to play make believe that some digital copy costs just so much to make and deliver, when it doesn't, it is nothing like a dead trees copy there, not even close.. Even ten bucks for some digital copy of a random book is way too expensive, it's ridiculous. Hey, why not brag about paying 200 grand for a toyota corolla? I'm sure there is some dealer out there would gladly markup to that level and take that much for one. Or maybe you can get one of those 999$ iPod apps that just says "I'm just so rich I can afford this app that does nothing but show how much it cost me, neener neener"? I mean, do you really want to encourage this price level for a few cents worth of electron transfer, and make it even worse? You said this was an academic question, so there it is in more detail, exactly why is this supposed to be a good deal for society in general terms, paying such a huge markup? How about the alternative, much cheaper per-copy costs, and have a MUCH larger sales potential then? How about that as a more fair alternative?
I say people should do this, stop paying that much for digital copies of stuff, and then however they want to go about it, email or phone calls or whatever, tell those content sellers they would be perfectly willing to buy product x, y or z, but only at a much fairer price level, a price level that reflects TRUE digital replicator costs to make and deliver new copies, for anything really, books, music, movies, software..whatever. If it can be made into a digital copy and transferred that way, it should be really cheap now, because that's the reality of the tech/engineering level we are at now.
I just hate large scale industry collusion to maintain artificial high prices in most anything, I don't care what the product is, tangible or intangible. It's even worse when people encourage that behavior and business practice by paying those bloated prices.
I thoroughly like the idea of ebooks and whatever, so that people all over the planet can get access to that, it is just ridiculous to think those sort of prices are fair or even a long range smart business decision.
Huge volume sales and really cheap prices are where it is at long range I think, at least it certainly should be. Charging 15 bucks for an ebook just knocks out about 3/4ths of the humans on the planet now from considering purchase, and even in the remaining 1/4 it is still serious price gouging.
I'm really not trying to be flambeau-bate here, just I seem by nature to take a longer range view of things, that's just how I look at stuff, always have. Digital copy prices today are a bad precedent now, and it needs to change.
Re:Kindle v. iPad (Score:3, Insightful)
So you think the titles are too expensive, then you lambast Amazon for dropping a publisher which tried to hike their prices by 50%?
Exactly. eBooks are _already_ overpriced. Not available AND overpriced is even worse.
If $9.99 is too expensive isn't $15 even more expensive? That's an increase of 150%. The Gizmoto article says this though: "Update: It's known Amazon loses money offering some bestsellers at $9.99". Now I don't know how many tymes I've heard, er read, it but a number of people have said low cost e-books drive sales for printed books. If so then the question that should be asked is if the increase in sales of printed books offsets the loss from e-books.
It seems the publishers have the upper hand, now that they can play them against Apple.
Steve Jobs stood up to the music industry, and told them how much music downloads would cost, but he's rolling over for book publishers and letting them set e-book prices?
Falcon
Re:Kindle v. iPad (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:stop feeding the trolls (Score:4, Insightful)
The book is $35 retail, so I saved $20 and a tree. As far as I'm concerned the information in the book and the enjoyment of reading is well worth the expense. Books shouldn't be gratis, and while it's a bit of a pill that it's DRMd, I was really only going to read the thing ONCE...
Thats the thing about books, and to a greater extent TV and movies: you generally only consume them a couple times. DRM is a pretty tolerable model for such media. Music is different, but then again people don't seem to buy music at ALL any more, unless they're going for something specific: they usually just start up Pandora, which is an example of an even LESS libre model than DRMd media.
Re:Kindle v. iPad (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple, which sells no paper copies at all, really cannot strong-arm the publishers. The only lever they have is that they are an alternative to Amazon. But so is B&N. It will really come down to who sells the most readers, and Amazon is way ahead and it is unlikely that a $500 reader is going to compete well in volume versus a $260 Kindle.
Re:stop feeding the trolls (Score:3, Insightful)
A major problem, though, is that 5 years from now the book will likely be around $15 retail, and the ebook will probably still be $15.
Also the "save a tree" argument is facetious. The paper industry is not stupid. Just as farmers use crop rotation (to prevent too much of the good stuff in soil being burned up and thus hurting their yields), they plant crops on different land every season. Many logging companies plant 2 trees for every one they cut down so when they come back in however many years it takes for trees to grow there will be something for them to make into lumber.