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

[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

[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

[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.

Yoda says

[Anonymous Coward]

begun the book wars have

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....

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.

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.

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: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: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...