Amazon Pulls Book Publisher's Listings; Ebook Wars Underway?

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."

Comments

Kindle v. iPad

[seanadams.com]

Amazon knows they're going to have to be way cheaper in order to sell any more Kindles. The problem with the Kindle is, well, it kind of sucks. I am a regular Amazon customer and have been using one since the second version came out, but there are some major problems wth it.

1. Screen contrast. The Kindle's contrast ratio is worse than newspaper printing or the cheapest paperback. You can read it in direct sunlight, sure, but can you read it indoors without a 200W light bulb directly behind you? I get eyestrain with it after just 15 minutes, but I can read a good LCD for hours.
2. Bad for illustrations. More than half the books I read are technical in nature and have diagrams and equations that require zooming to read. The problem is zooming is incredibly slow and laborious on the Kindle, and in most cases the bitmap image quality is not sufficient to read anyway.
3. Freagin slow. Right, it doesn't matter when you're just paging through a novel, but this makes it useless for shopping for books, web browsing, or quickly finding something in a reference book.
4. Titles are too expensive. Many paperbacks are SAME price delivered 2nd-day UPS to my doorstep (with Prime free shipping). What the fuck? And then more expensive titles are only a few dollars cheaper for the Kindle edition but of vastly poorer quality and without the ownership and durability advantages of a dead tree.

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.

Re:Kindle v. iPad

[cheesybagel]

So you think the titles are too expensive, then you lambast Amazon for dropping a publisher which tried to hike their prices by 50%?

Re:Kindle v. iPad

[maxume]

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

[sonicmerlin]

While I'm oh so certain the omission of LCD screen quality has nothing to do with any possible bias of yours, I would like to remind you that the Kindle has a e-ink screen is much easier on the eyes than an LCD is. The development of new kinds of e-ink tech (both color and faster refreshing) also gives Amazon a road-map for future screen improvements. Apple's tablet requirements mean they will be stuck with LCD for the foreseeable future. OLED would solve their problems I imagine, but it will be years before 10 inch OLEDs are affordable enough for mass market adoption.

Re:Kindle v. iPad

[timeOday]

I wouldn't be surprised if iPad e-books cost even more than on Kindle, since they're higher resolution and in color. What difference does that make to publishing costs, you ask? Virtually none! But whether from tape to CD, or VHS to DVD to Blu-Ray, publishers always use any bump in functionality to increase the price as well.

But is it more functional? Personally, I think the backlit LCD screen is the achilles heel of the iPad as a e-book reader. Being readable outdoors, and consuming no power at all unless turning pages, is what virtually defines the usefulness of an ebook. But I look at how color screens ruined the mp3 player market by pushing out B&W LCD screens that were sunlight visible and had great battery life, with color screens that were in no way superior for an mp3 player, and I fear the same for e-paper.

CNN is running an iPad vs Kindle fluff piece thought experiment this morning and give virtually no weight to the utility of e-paper vs. the pizzazz of color, and unfortunately I expect the same from most consumers.

Re:Kindle v. iPad

[BrokenHalo]

As usual, there are two sides to this story.

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:Kindle v. iPad

[Nerdfest]

Wait for it ... the publishers may be thinking they can get away with a premium for a book on iTunes. It's not beyond the realm of possibility. It doesn't seem to me that Amazon is the entity that people should be upset with here, but I haven't been awake long.

Re:Kindle v. iPad

[Colonel Korn]

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.

Re:Kindle v. iPad

[seanadams.com]

Example of a recent actual purchase: Food Rules. $5 paper, $5 kindle.

I'd consider that a particularly good example of getting far less value in the kindle version, because that is exactly the kind of book that I would want to give to a friend when I'm done with it.

Re:Kindle v. iPad

[iluvcapra]

On the other hand, they have managed to shoot themselves in the foot with pinpoint accuracy.

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

[BrokenHalo]

...but of vastly poorer quality and without the ownership and durability advantages of a dead tree.

I'm not so sure that we can count on such a durability advantage. This is a bit of a hobby-horse of mine, so I'll try to keep it brief...

I am of the opinion that in the future, the 20th and most of the 19th centuries are going to appear to surviving generations as something of a "dark age". Since publishers started using woodchips to provide the requisite fibre to make paper in about the 1820s, residual acids in the paper have had a destructive effect on the paper. While some quality publications still appear on rag or otherwise stabilised or buffered paper, much has simply disintegrated.

The trouble is, although printers must be aware of the problem, they don't seem to be doing anything about it. I have many texts from the 1980s which are in very poor shape, which is bad enough. But what has disappointed me more is that a number of books I have bought *new* in the last year are already showing signs of serious foxing.

Although I still love the feel - and the smell - of printed paper, I'm inclined to think the textual content has a better chance of survival in digital form, provided that it is stripped of proprietary formats and DRM.

Re:Kindle v. iPad

[jonbryce]

In Britain, ebooks tend to be expensive relative to paper books because paper books have 0% VAT (sales tax), and ebooks have 17.5% VAT, or 15% if they are delivered from Luxembourg, which they quite often are. Is it a similar situation where you are?

Re:Kindle v. iPad

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

Indeed, it looks like the publishers hiked up the price on iTunes, presumably in full cooperation with Apple, and didn't want Amazon to gain an advantage by having cheaper books. Amazon looks like its on the side of the good guys here, while Apple is the opposite.

Re:Kindle v. iPad

[tirk]

I for one prefer my Kindle (ver 1 for that matter) over an LCD screen any day, but not for the eyestrain reason. I can read my kindle by the firelight of my fireplace, or a candle, and not have any issues with eye strain at all. While I can read my LCD in a completely dark room, or by any indoor light, it does eventually give me eyestrain, but it's really not very much. For me the big difference is in power. I can read my kindle for two weeks and not have to plug it in. Even my best LCD laptop only goes about 5 hours. On a 10 hour plane flight I'd either have to bring extra batteries, or only read for half the flight. And on camping trips, forget it, but with the Kindle I can be on a week long camping trip and still know I'll have something to read.

In the end, I think each has it's place, just as people debate which is better, a PC or Mac, each has strengths and each has weaknesses. The Kindle, Nook. iPad issues will be the same, and in the end, it comes down to what do you want out of it, and what are the most important features to you. That will be all the difference in making one better then the other.

Re:Kindle v. iPad

[BlackCreek]

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.

No, Amazon is trying to strong arm people trying to price hike in their store.

Re:Kindle v. iPad

[Fallingcow]

Anyone who wanted just the ebook copy could buy the dead-tree, get the ebook, then sell the dead-tree and effectively get a discount while flooding the second hand market with like-new copies and driving down the price.

Re:Kindle v. iPad

[Corporate Drone]

Absolutely -- when Apple introduced the iPad, reporters pressed Jobs on pricing: he just kept repeating that the prices on eBooks would be the same as on Amazon. Now we see what that means: Apple is allowing the publishers to raise their prices, vis-a-vis Amazon, so the publishers are now walking across the street and saying, "I want $15, not $10, and if you don't like it, I'm pulling out of your marketplace".

This is just a pre-emptive strike by Amazon -- it'd be far more damaging if the headline read "Apple eBook vendor drops Amazon"...

Re:Kindle v. iPad

[LoverOfJoy]

My guess is that MacMillan made a deal with Apple to sell it cheaper on the ipad. Amazon doesn't want the image of being the pricey alternative and would rather drop them than keep that image.

This is similar to Walmart and Best Buy that have guarantees for the lowest price. If you bring an add from another store with a cheaper price, they'll honor that ad. But if you check, you'll see they never sell the exact same model computer (and probably most other high end products). They cut a deal with HP or Toshiba or whoever to make a slightly different model specifically for them. Maybe the RAM or HD size is slightly different. Walmart won't sell the models found at Best Buy and vice versa. They don't want to enter into potential price wars yet they want to keep their image of "We'll beat any price in town!" I suspect a similar thing is going on with Amazon. You can sell $15 books on Amazon...but you can't go to the competitor and sell it for $10 while upping our price to $15.

Re:Kindle v. iPad

[jimfrost]

Amazon's books are color too, if you have a color-capable device (such as an iPhone). The real reason why books from Apple are likely to be more expensive (as are those from Sony today) is that Apple is a small retailer relative to Amazon. Amazon has much more negotiating strength. The same things that Apple can and does do in negotiations with record labels Amazon does with publishers.

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:Kindle v. iPad

[falconwolf]

Obvious AND trivial math error. It's a 50% increase.

The error is yours. $10 X 1.50 = $15.

Troll

Falcon

Re:Kindle v. iPad

[whhyohwhyslashdot]

you sir, are a moron.

by your logic $10 X 1 = $10 so, not changing the price at all is considered a 100% Increase - brilliant!

Perhaps you should read more often, and maybe learn what the meaning of the word increase is.

Yoda says

[Anonymous Coward]

begun the book wars have

Is Apple ePub DRM free?

[Albanach]

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:Is Apple ePub DRM free?

[cob666]

I agree with the parent here regarding the actual viability of the iPad as a ebook reader. I read books on my tablet PC when I first got it and after a book or two I found myself not reading as much. I got my self a Sony eReader a few years ago and I couldn't be happier with my decision.

The backlit screen is not comfortable to read on and I would be surprised if the iPad is ever considered to be a true eReader.

Re:Is Apple ePub DRM free?

[mejogid]

It's DRM'd to high hell - books, movies and apps. The only reason the music isn't is thanks to competition from the likes of Amazon. There's something slightly frustrating about using an explicitly open format and then spewing their own brand of DRM all over it.

Re:Is Apple ePub DRM free?

[metamatic]

Erm, no. It's been Steve Job's and Apple's stance for a long time that DRM is a bad thing, even before Amazon sold music. The problem is that publishers want DRM on their products and when they enter into agreements they usually insist on DRM as part of the deal. Do you see any other major player offering DRM-free movies?

If only Steve Jobs had some influence with movie studios like Pixar, he could persuade them to make their movies available DRM-free...

Re:Is Apple ePub DRM free?

[mejogid]

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 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:Abuse of dominant marketshare...

[CrimsonAvenger]

No comment on the technical legality of Amazon's de-listing, but it's certainly an abuse of power by conventional standards.

No. Amazon sells eBooks for less than $10. MacMillan doesn't like that idea, and wants $15. Amazon is under no obligation to sell MacMillan's books if MacMillan won't agree to Amazon's terms.

I don't even like the idea of a $10 eBook, much less a $15 one, so I guess I won't be buying any MacMillan eBooks either....

A paperback is 7 bucks

[ThreeGigs]

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.

iPad isn't an ebook reader

[zippthorne]

I really don't understand why people keep trying to shoehorn epaper and netbooks into the same category. I wish apple luck, and I think i might get iPad if i didn't already have an apple laptop: iPad + iMac would cover more use cases than Macbook + iMac, and cost less as well*, although just a macbook + generic LCD external monitor covers a lot of those cases as well.

*presuming of course, an all-apple home.

But it's not an ebook reader, and the Kindle is not the only e-reader, nor is it the only widely-held e-reader. Sony has a number of mature offerings, and Barnes & Noble's device looks very interesting, although it can't possibly have the numbers to compete with amazon yet, it's only two months old and it's been sold out for one and a half of those months.

I think publishers would be making a mistake if they think they can play apple and amazon against each other in this case, or if they think that trying to do that worked for them in the last case (e-music)

Re:Seems to me...

[FroBugg]

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.

MacMillan

[arkenian]

I've got to say that MacMillan has never liked the concept of e-books to begin with, has been one of the fiercest supporters of strong DRM, and have ALWAYS wanted to price their e-books way too high. MacMillan is, for those who don't know, the owners of the TOR imprint (read: Wheel of Time) as the one most likely to be known by /. readers. That's right, the same people who will price an e-book like a hardcover after the paperback is out, and who regularly charged $15 for the PROLOGUES of the wheel of time books in electronic format. Plus they almost always delay the e-book publications, which annoys me. I have never liked MacMillan, and the only reason they get away with it (from me) is because while I don't like their company's policies on digital media, they actually do have pretty high quality editors and authors.
And while they could probably care less at Amazon de-listing their kindle books, if they've delisted the dead tree books, that's a real threat. And they deserve it, probably. That said, this is a game of chicken. Amazon can't afford to de-list their dead-tree for very long, and MacMillan can't afford to have them de-listed for very long. Who will blink first?
Or it could just be a glitch, there's no official reasons posted and TFA even admits they're not sure of the link, here. Amazon has had some wierd glitches before.
In another note, I do a lot of e-book reading on both my Kindle and my Laptop and other devices, and if what I want to do is 'sit and read a book' for several hours, the kindle wins every time.

Re:Good. Fuck 'em.

[The Mighty Buzzard]

Pretty flamish but I have to agree. Take a paperback at $5-8, remove the permanence by making it digital, restrict how/where/when it can be used, and then try to charge me two to three times what I have to pay for paperbacks? Yeah, thanks but no thanks. I'll keep buying hardcopy and if I want it in ebook form I'll pirate it until they drop their prices to around 20% of paperback price.

Macmillan already lost at least 1 customer

[metamatic]

My book club picked a book from Tor, which seems to be a Macmillan subdivision. I had sent the preview to my Kindle, and went to buy it yesterday. It was no longer available, so after thinking "WTF?" for a while, I bought a used paperback copy instead.

Way to go, Macmillan!

Since Amazon say 60% of their book sales are Kindle, I imagine Macmillan are going to be hurting.

For serious readers, there's no comparison.

[aussersterne]

I am essentially a professional reader, and I go through 1,000-2,000 pages a week easily, if not more.

I've also been a gadgeteer since the same time as many of us greyhairs on /. I can remember when the Newton was the coolest new tech thing on the block and I was busy reading books on it. In the meantime, I've gone through desktops, tablet PCs, laptops, netbooks, smartphones, and Palm devices galore.

Laptops suck for reading in volume. They discipline your body; you must adopt a specific narrow range of postures and locations in order to use a laptop, which is heavy, hot, and fragile. Not good by page 800 when you're still trying to plough on. Not to mention eyestrain and headaches from the backlight.

I can get through a couple hundred pages on my iPhone, tiny as it is, but suffer many of the same problems in the end.

Kindle has been a revelation. I have nearly switched to Kindle entirely for my secondary research, and it's clearly a reading device. Light, endless battery, no eyestrain, nonfragile (no hinges, worries about pressure on the LCD, popping keys off when they catch on your zipper, etc.), no heat generation, legible in anything other than pitch darkness.

I'm tempted by the iPad, but it certainly would NOT be a Kindle-killer for me until/unless high-refresh color e-ink emerges.

Who wins an Apple-Amazone ebook war?

[DragonWriter]

Barnes and Noble, especially if Amazon's tactics include delisting print publishers that sign deals with Apple for ebooks.

Re:Price at Apple store?

[oh2]

www.webscription.net is a good site for SciFi e-books, The selection is steadily growing and the books cost around $6. Thats a nice pricepoint for e-books IMO, I buy books there all the time.

stop feeding the trolls

[zogger]

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:stop feeding the trolls

[iluvcapra]

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.