iPad book deals leaving room for lower prices?
updated 09:55 am EST, Thu February 18, 2010
Some titles could sell for Kindle-like $10
Titles sold through iBooks may be cheaper than previously expected, say three sources said to be familiar with Apple's publisher negotiations. Apple currently has deals with five major publishers, under which most adult new-release fiction and non-fiction titles will sell for $13 to $15. From this Apple is set to take a 30 percent cut, as it does at the App Store.
The sources claim however that there are provisions in Apple's deals that require publishers to discount bestsellers. The $13 to $15 range would thus be more of an upper limit, driving prices as low as $10 in some cases. The barometer is expected to be the New York Times bestsellers list, which often drives retail book prices down as well.
Apple's arrangement is also said to borrow cues from cheaper hardcovers. In cases where a physical hardcover is cheaper than $26, the equivalent iBooks title may be substantially less than $13, even if it has not reached a bestsellers list.
This may make books for the iPad seem only somewhat more lucrative to publishers than those for the Amazon Kindle. Many new and bestselling Kindle books cost $10, so little that Amazon itself is often losing money, a result of paying publishers a wholesale price worth about half of what the public pays for the same book on paper.
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Dec 2005
Note to Publishers
If you want a mass adoption of digital books (and who wouldn't considering all of the overhead costs you'd be eliminating) you want the success in two areas: Mass appeal for the reader device, and mass appeal in the content price. It's very hard to have the former without the latter, unless it's the swiss army knife of reading devices like that iPad may end up being.
To that end, I suggest titles matching if not under-cutting mass market paperback copies. For those of us who can bear to wait until a title reaches that price model (usually by waiting their turn for the free copy from the public library), keeping older titles at the higher introductory rate, as has been done at Amazon, is a real barrier for people to even consider going for the digital version.
Go ahead. See if the half-hardcover price model will be truly successful in the market. Remember, you're aiming at people who are used to a spending habit of handing over only a few dollars at a time for the digital media they buy. If you're trying to hook previously non-readers into literature consumption, sticker shock isn't your friend.
If you set the bar low enough, you may be able to get real fans to re-purchase entire series for the digital versions. Just my 2 cents.