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rwizard · 01-31-2010, 05:15 PM

Apple no doubt negotiated this whole situation to their advantage. They know that publishers want their books sold at a higher price and Apple wants into the ebook/ebook reader market. So, they go to publishers and say "we will agree to charge more for ebooks if you renegotiate your contracts with Amazon and likely B&N to force them to charge more or force them to wait 6 months to a year to get the ebook. If they don't want to except these terms, don't worry. You may loose out on some sales in the short term, but more people will have an iPad than the entire current ebook market in relatively short order and since most of this market will not have been buyig ebooks previously, they won't even notice the price difference." And it will probably be true. Even if apple still allows the B&N and Amazon apps on the iPad (which is far from guaranteed), iBooks will come on the device and people new to ebooks will not even look for another option. Apple is using epub but not Adobe or B&N DRM, which will be incorporated into the Adobe SDK, according to Adobe. Consequently, just like anyone who has a large collection of iTunes from before they were being sold without DRM (and who does not want to go through the hassle of doing what it takes to remove the DRM), these people will be locked into apples products to read those books from then on. Since they will be looking at getting a large section of "Joe public" to buy the device, quickly expanding the market to 200% or more of the current entire ebook reader market, there will be plenty of customers to buy the books, even if those customers do no buy as many books as the current people in the ebook market.

I think that, at least for some publishers, this will be very tempting. And if the publishers are exclusively available on the iBook store, then without removing DRM you will likely only be able to read them on Apples products and posibly personal computers (probably through iTunes. (a side note, Itunes needs to be renamed iMedia or something at this point))

I think Apple has played this very smart. The publishers on the other hand will go from Amazon dictating terms to Apple dictating terms. I am not sure that this will put them in a better position than they are in currently in the long run.

01-31-2010, 05:15 PM	#211
rwizard Connoisseur Posts: 63 Karma: 366 Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Utah Device: iPhone, waiting for reviews on the Notionink Adam	Apple no doubt negotiated this whole situation to their advantage. They know that publishers want their books sold at a higher price and Apple wants into the ebook/ebook reader market. So, they go to publishers and say "we will agree to charge more for ebooks if you renegotiate your contracts with Amazon and likely B&N to force them to charge more or force them to wait 6 months to a year to get the ebook. If they don't want to except these terms, don't worry. You may loose out on some sales in the short term, but more people will have an iPad than the entire current ebook market in relatively short order and since most of this market will not have been buyig ebooks previously, they won't even notice the price difference." And it will probably be true. Even if apple still allows the B&N and Amazon apps on the iPad (which is far from guaranteed), iBooks will come on the device and people new to ebooks will not even look for another option. Apple is using epub but not Adobe or B&N DRM, which will be incorporated into the Adobe SDK, according to Adobe. Consequently, just like anyone who has a large collection of iTunes from before they were being sold without DRM (and who does not want to go through the hassle of doing what it takes to remove the DRM), these people will be locked into apples products to read those books from then on. Since they will be looking at getting a large section of "Joe public" to buy the device, quickly expanding the market to 200% or more of the current entire ebook reader market, there will be plenty of customers to buy the books, even if those customers do no buy as many books as the current people in the ebook market. I think that, at least for some publishers, this will be very tempting. And if the publishers are exclusively available on the iBook store, then without removing DRM you will likely only be able to read them on Apples products and posibly personal computers (probably through iTunes. (a side note, Itunes needs to be renamed iMedia or something at this point)) I think Apple has played this very smart. The publishers on the other hand will go from Amazon dictating terms to Apple dictating terms. I am not sure that this will put them in a better position than they are in currently in the long run.