Book pricing (like most pricing) is only loosely related to production costs. The entire publishing ecosystem is being dragged into the digital age by a mix of defacto bribes and strong-arming from technology companies like Amazon and Apple. (Shameless plug for more detail at http://blog.sbooks.net/2010/01/14/ebookcost/. The real sparks may start to fly when the price wars collide with vendor lock-in. It's not clear what kind of DRM we'll see for iBooks. They've mentioned using ePub, but it's not clear if they'll go with Adobe's DRM, like the Nook, or some version of their own. It will also be interesting to see if Apple allows the iPhone/iTouch Kindle app on the iPad.
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Book pricing (like most pricing) is only loosely related to production costs. The entire publishing ecosystem is being dragged into the digital age by a mix of defacto bribes and strong-arming from technology companies like Amazon and Apple. (Shameless plug for more detail at http://blog.sbooks.net/2010/01/14/ebookcost/.
The real sparks may start to fly when the price wars collide with vendor lock-in. It's not clear what kind of DRM we'll see for iBooks. They've mentioned using ePub, but it's not clear if they'll go with Adobe's DRM, like the Nook, or some version of their own. It will also be interesting to see if Apple allows the iPhone/iTouch Kindle app on the iPad.