Slog

News & Arts

Line Out

Music & the City
at Night

« SL Letter of the Day: Should My Hus… | This Guy Is a Fag »

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Books Today in E-books, Money, and the Future

Posted by Paul Constant on Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 12:45 PM

Screen_shot_2010-03-24_at_11.54.43_AM.png

AppAdvice.com has leaked some images of the iBookstore and found that Apple is matching Amazon's $9.99 e-book prices on some bestsellers, although they're as much as four dollars more then Kindle prices on some other books.

In other news, it looks like Borders will finally get an e-reading device later this year in the Kobo e-reader, which looks like a pretty straightforward $150 e-ink reader. But will it come in time to save the company? Borders has a huge loan deadline approaching on April 1st that could have drastic effects on the company's future.

And in still other news, this media futurist's prediction that the e-book tipping point will come in 18 months is an interesting read:

A multi-channel, loosely controlled digital distribution network with free or low-priced content was the dominant vision of the future. Publishers will make money by up-selling content and services, and by higher market penetration. Consumer data and peer-to-peer recommendations will become an important part of this new, non-linear value chain...Leonhard, whose background is music, urged publishers to avoid pursuing Digital Rights Management. "You can't prevent sharing, you have to find ways to monetise it. The idea of preventing it is understandable but it's not realistic."

Comments (4) RSS

Oldest First Unregistered On Registered On Add a comment

Wow, that's original. It looks like a crappy knockoff of the mini-kindle in which the keyboard has been replaced by one giant button (so I guess you won't be able to make any notes or search for books, unless it's got a touch screen, but then why all the blank space at the bottom instead of a bigger screen!?)

Why don't companies ever learn that the money doesn't come from playing catch up? It's like all the companies trying to compete with the iPhone by selling slightly cheaper iPhone knockoffs and trying to replicate most of their features.

If you're going to create a product, make SOMETHING unique about it!!

Posted by gember on March 24, 2010 at 1:12 PM

gmember beat me too it! That's EXACTLY what I thought. At first glance I thought it was a Kindle.

Posted by Apple Fan on March 24, 2010 at 1:23 PM

A clarification: Apple is not setting the prices in iBookstore; the publishers are setting the prices, and Apple is taking a 30% cut of that. Your story makes it sound as though Apple set the prices.

Posted by Timothy on March 24, 2010 at 1:48 PM

Seems like a bad idea for a gadget to be so obviously for right handed people. I'm a righty, but damn, I wouldn't want to exclude 7-10% of people right off the bat. (pun intended...)

Posted by Toad in the Hole on March 24, 2010 at 9:01 PM