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Archives: January 2010

Steve Jobs Reveals Apple’s eBook Pricing

It looks like Mr. Jobs said more than we thought on Wednesday about Apple’s eBook Pricing plans. Check out this video by Kara Swisher from The Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital blog. At about 2:15, we see WSJ tech columnist Walt Mossberg talking to Jobs about iBooks. Mossberg asks Jobs why someone would pay $14.99 for an eBook from Apple when they could buy the same book from Amazon for $9.99. Jobs answer is very compelling:

“That won’t happen,” Jobs says. “The prices will be the same…Publishers are actually going to pull their books from Amazon because they’re not happy.”

Whoa! Did he just say Apple will be maintaining Amazon’s $9.99 pricepoint? Nonetheless, selling books through Apple is still a better deal for publishers, who will get 70% of whatever Apple charges the consumer, whereas Amazon works on a wholesale model, paying publishers half or less than half of what they’re charging.

But, if what Jobs says in this video is true, it looks like Apple won’t be doing much to help publishers disabuse consumers of that $9.99-is-what-an-eBook-is-worth mindset. As far as publishers pulling books from Amazon, we’ll believe that when we see it.

Online Bolano Reading Group Adds Interactive Map

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The Internet really does change everything, doesn’t it. eBookNewser has been following the online Roberto Bolano reading group that began making its way through 2666 last week. Earlier, Matt Bucher, the founder of the reading group, told eBookNewser about the various ways readers were communicating about the book.

He also said, “We really are interested in the quality rather than quantity,” in terms of readers. Well, the Website that’s the group’s hub is of a very high quality indeed. It’s just added a cool new feature: an interactive Google map that charts the locations mentioned in the novel.

Here’s what Bucher told eBookNewser about other Internet features he hopes to add to the blog in the future:

We do have more ideas about how to gather together all of this in stuff more ways. For example, we will likely turn the running list of characters into a wiki that anyone can add to or edit. Also, for the later sections of the novel, I’ve invited a couple of my friends who are history PhDs to write longer, more academic pieces about the Mexican border and Sonoran murders. I had thought that when we got to the end of the project, we’d have have a nice reader’s guide already written and we might pitch that to publishers. However, I feel that with a print edition the blog comments would be lost, the forum postings wouldn’t fit in, and all the interactivity would be gone. So I kind of feel like, purely from a reader’s perspective, that the online materials make for a richer experience than the static book. And you will not meet a bigger book lover than me.

Part of the fun of this is also just adding things as we go, so I can’t say for certain what else we will add. I’m open to suggestions!

As you can see on the map above, there’s a cluster of little blue flags in the European countries where much of the novel takes place, and one in South America. One commentator on the blog asks a good question: how will the Google map represent the fictional Ciudad Juarez around which the novel centers?

Perhaps Google needs to start indexing imaginary places and creating a hybrid between Google Maps and Google Books?

Makers of the Classics App Respond to iBooks

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Some of those following the iPad unveiling remarked at the time and after on Twitter that iBooks bears a striking resemblance to a popular eBook app for iPhone. The app is called Classics, and it was designed by Andrew Kaz and Phil Ryu and features a growing list of public domain eBooks that is added to every time the developers update the app.

As you can see, the iBooks interface (below) looks very much like the Classics bookshelf (above). Apparently, Classics fans began writing to the developers to ask whether they had anything to do with iBooks as soon as Apple’s iPad was announced. In response, Kaz and Ryu quickly added the following note to the app’s description in Apple’s app store:

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“Many of you have been contacting us with questions recently announced iBooks for iPad. We have no involvement, but we are proud to have influenced the future user interface of digital reading.”

A mutual admiration society? Is this wooden bookshelf indeed “the future user interface of digital reading”? An overstatement, perhaps. But Apple certainly seems to have been impressed with this particular app.

Amazon Reports “Millions” of Kindles Sold

jeffbezos-1.gifApple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs and his iPad will face some solid eBook competition from Amazon (AMZN) and the Kindle.

In a dramatic statement about his company’s place in the eBook universe, Amazon (AMZN) CEO Jeff Bezos bragged that his company has sold “millions” of Kindles–the most concrete sales figures he has offered for the eReader.

Here’s his statement: “Millions of people now own Kindles … And Kindle owners read, a lot. When we have both editions, we sell 6 Kindle books for every 10 physical books. This is year-to-date and includes only paid books — free Kindle books would make the number even higher. It’s been an exciting 27 months.”

As booksellers around the globe struggled in the fourth quarter, Bezos reported that Amazon’s net sales had grown 42 percent to $9.52 billion compared to the same period last year. The statement comes after a mixed response to the Apple (AAPL) iPad unveiling yesterday.

iPad and Me: Jonathan Segura

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eBookNewser polled a bunch of publishing and book people about yesterday’s Apple iPad announcement. It’s getting mixed responses, but everyone, it seems, has something to say.

Jonathan Segura, novelist and Deputy Reviews Editor of Publishers Weekly notes some of the iPad’s important, if perhaps unintended, features, and isn’t quite sure about iBooks. Here’s what he told eBookNewser:

Come summer, I’m sure we’ll be seeing way more iPads than Kindles on the subway, but I imagine the majority of iPad users won’t be reading on them. Of course, if you could watch porn (or, you know, something from Pixar) on your Kindle, there’d be fewer people reading on those devices, as well.

or!

re: iBooks– Apple’s proven it can sell media, but books are more than a little different from music, TV shows and movies. I’ve tried and failed–repeatedly–at reading ebooks on my iPhone. Maybe the bigger screen will help, but I just don’t know that I’d want to read a 300-page novel on an LCD screen, no matter how pretty the packaging is.

Is iBooks An Afterthought?

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Maybe by now you’ve watched yesterday’s full Apple event, which Apple posted on its site, as it always does. Maybe you’re cooler than this blogger, and you didn’t. But you’ve probably been following the coverage, the analysis, the live blogs. Publishing has been hoping and praying for iBooks–though nobody knew it was called that–for months or years now. But it got a comparatively small mention in yesterday’s event. A couple of minutes of demonstration, relative to the 10-15 minutes devoted to, say, iWork, the productivity suite. Why?

Is it really the case that Steve Jobs still believes that no one reads anymore? Or is he really excited about using the iPad as an eBook reader?

Of course, there was no mention of pricing–that’s not Apple’s style, and it’s certainly a controversial issue with Apple’s publishing partners–or of who beyond the major trade houses will get their books in the store. All of this will become clearer in the coming months, but it’s really what we want to know–nobody doubted Apple would make eBooks look great. But will Apple be able to help change the culture around the selling and reading of eBooks?

What do you think? Is eReading central to Apple’s conception of the iPad?

Why Digital Publishers Need Virtual Currency

orca-logo.pngWhile most of the Internet struggles to make money with old fashioned advertising Zynga Games made headlines for selling virtual goods inside Facebook-based games like FarmVille and Mafia Wars.

Most people don’t realize how these game worlds have grown into hubs for virtual commerce. At Digital Book World this week, GalleyCat interviewed an executive from Orca–a company developing virtual currency platforms for companies.

In the exclusive video below, Orca president Richard Caccappolo explained how publishers can use virtual currencies and virtual goods to spice up their online bookstores–tapping a new kind of digital commerce.

Here’s an excerpt: “They convert [virtual currencies] at prices that are not easily divided–one dollar gives you 33 credits [for example] … People don’t necessarily think, ‘it cost me 42-cents to send my friend a virtual beer.’ I think when the publishing industry starts thinking about how they chunk up content–whether it be articles or chapters–it shouldn’t be a debate of whether an article is worth one dollar or three dollars. An article should cost 43 credits.”

iPad and Me: Sarah Weinman

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eBookNewser polled a bunch of publishing and book people about yesterday’s Apple iPad announcement. It’s getting mixed responses, but everyone, it seems, has something to say.

Book columnist and blogger Sarah Weinman likes the iPad, but thinks we need to wait a while to gauge whether it will fulfill publishers’ hopes. Here’s what she told eBooknewser:

“Now that a few hours have passed, I’m feeling somewhat neutral about the iPad. It definitely has a lot of potential to make e-books and digital reading a snazzier, more colorful experience than you’d ever get on a Kindle, but I also think it’s too early to tell if it will live up to the excitement publishers have expressed to date. I guess the best answer is – let’s see what happens six months to a year from the March/April launch date, when the price drops a couple of hundred bucks across the board (as with the iPhone’s first generation back in 2007) and there’s some bona fide data about how many iBooks version of e-books sell relative to Kindle books.”

CourseSmart to Develop iPad Version of Its App

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Get ready to hear a lot of news like this: popular iPhone eBook app developers announcing iPad versions of their iPhone or iPod Touch apps. First to come our way was a release from CourseSmart, the eTextBook company.

CourseSmart announced that as of today, it’s developing an iPad version of it’s iPhone app, which is already in use by students. Here’s what CourseSmart says about its hopes for the app:

College students currently spend $300-$400 a semester on textbook content but they save an average of 50% on each textbook they buy as a CourseSmart eTextbook, a 3 to 5 semester (depending on how many eTextbooks they buy) payback on a $499 device! We believe that many students will see the combination of CourseSmart and the iPad as a way to get all of their textbook content on an exciting new multi-function device for the same amount of money or less than they are already spending on textbooks.

Take note, college students: you can’t play Need for Speed on a Kindle DX.

iPad and Me: Mark Coker of Smashwords

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Mark Coker, CEO of Smashwords, has high hopes for iPad, or at lest for the ways it is likely to bring new readers to eBooks and help publishers realign eBook pricing. Here’s what he told eBookNewser:

Any new device that introduces millions of new readers to ebooks is good news for authors and publishers. As a publisher and distributor of over 7,000 books, I see the iPad as a promising retail platform for the authors and publishers we represent.

Today at Digital Book World, it became clear large publishers are looking to Apple and others such as Google Editions to serve as counterbalances to Amazon’s dominance of the ebook retailing space. Yet what many publishers want – for customers to pay more for their books – is an unachievable pipe dream for most trade books.

Many publishers appreciate their ability to set prices in the iBooks store, yet this feature alone won’t unseat Amazon. If publishers set prices too high, their customers will go elsewhere. Most large publishers today will not lower their retail price to $9.99, yet Amazon has already made clear it’s willing to use that price point as a loss leader and make its profit with books at other price points.

Apple’s generous 70/30 revenue split to publishers, pre-empted by the same last week from Amazon to self-publishers, and already standard for Smashwords, sets new goal posts for publishers. Apple’s iPad/iBooks entry could spark a realignment to wholesale pricing models in 2010. Publishers will argue for lower wholesale discounts to other retailers, and retailers will argue for lower retail prices, and the end result will be lower priced ebooks for consumers.

iPad is certainly a big win for the IDPF and supporters of ePub.

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