Publishing giant Macmillan said late Saturday that Amazon.com has pulled its e-book titles from being sold for the Kindle in a price war apparently sparked by Apple Inc.’s new iPad.
Macmillan, a unit of Germany’s Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH, made the announcement in an advertisement on publishing industry Web site PublishersMarketplace.com.
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) announced Wednesday that Macmillan was among a group of publishers that would sell their titles on the iBook site set up for the iPad.
Apple is allowing publishers to charge more than the $9.99 that Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) has set for titles sold for the Kindle, long a point of dispute with publishers.
Under the Apple arrangement, publishers set their own e-book prices, with Apple taking 30 percent of the revenue. This is expected to raise many e-book titles to $12.99 and $14.99. Instead of black and white, the iPad allows publishers to add multimedia and color to the offerings, as well.
Macmillan said Amazon pulled its titles for sale through all but third parties after CEO John Sargent visited Seattle on Thursday to discuss “new terms of sales for e-books.”
I thought price wars caused prices to go down, not up. I guess not when you are dealing with products caught in the Jobbs RDF.
Got to hand it to the iPad book reader though… None of the portability of the kindle, without the pleasant front light reading experience, or the cost benefit, and everyone thinks the iPad will win over this market of…
Almost 1.5 million units sold over two years, and almost as successful as the Apple TV!
I realize a bunch of you are gonna buy iPads, but at least wait until they get discounted to $300 before you do so.
Misleading title. It is not “Amazon bans ebooks from MacMillan” but “Amazon and MacMillan fail to reach mutual agreement on pricing”. Very different substance.
#1: “Got to hand it to the iPad book reader though… None of the portability of the kindle, without the pleasant front light reading experience, or the cost benefit, and everyone thinks the iPad will win over this market of…”
You forgot the battery life as one of the “benefits” of the iPad 😉
#1: “Got to hand it to the iPad book reader though… None of the portability of the kindle, without the pleasant front light reading experience, or the cost benefit, and everyone thinks the iPad will win over this market of…”
You forgot the battery life as one of the “benefits” of the iPad. Although, I suspect that Steve expects people to just leave an additional iPad by the bed for reading, to get the most out of those weeks of stand-by battery time… 😉
[10 hours for the iPad? The Kindle lasts for two WEEKS. – ed.]
Why should an e-book cost the same as one made out of paper? Price your stuff to high and people will just steal it instead. DRM is only a speed bump not a barrier.
Free enterprise.
#3,
That bed side or sofa side experience is why I think this device compares more favorably to the digital picture frame market than the… whatever it is market…
If you look at it compared to other digital picture frames, it really is a best in class product. Look at the Sony and Hp high end digital picture frames, and you will have the same Ah Ha! moment I had.
This upward book price war between Apple and Amazon is one reason why I still buy paper books. Another is that library books can be borrowed for free, and used books are cheap.
neither is worth buying
I have had a Kindle since last March. I like it, and I don’t think an iPad would be as pleasant to use. I use my kindle walking my dogs, it is small enough to not be a hassle, (fits in my coat pocket with it’s leather cover). I love reading it in direct sunlight, and the battery goes on and on and on. I only charge it because I think I should, mostly. I have had the battery die only when I was testing to see how long it would go. (Over a week of reading it two hours or more a day).
Buy whatever you wish. I love my Kindle for reading, but I don’t think I would like to read from an LCD screen for hours at a time.
#7. I understand your point perfectly. I still love paper books. But a Kindle is different, because I can have an entire library plus newspapers with me. Nonetheless, my next book I read (Atlas Shrugged…Thanks Adam), will be a paperback, just because I still love books. And a paperback is very portable, and durable in dry weather.
I buy plenty of paper books and will probably keep doing so, especially when the ebook price is as expensive as it currently is and all the sheep who will blindly buy the ipad will be driving up the ebook price.
Authors get paid very little for every book they sell, the2 main factors in book pricing are the manufacturing and transportation costs. Ebooks completely remove these 2 costs and yet we still have to pay an extortionate $10 per book, and more now that apple is doing to ebboks what it still refuses to do with its music service and let the publishers set their own prices.
Why is steve jobs such a dick?
If Amazon raises it’s ebook prices, I’ll go back to paperbacks.
You all seem to have missed an even more “evil” part of this. Amazon has pulled all Macmillan books of all kinds, including paper, from their web site. If you find the books there you have to go to other sellers. Even those books for which there is no e-book.
I’m not against this e-book negotiation, but Amazon is being a bully to pull everything!
There must be a massive argument going on at Amazon between the product manager for the Kindle and the product manager for electronic books. Charlie Stross has a good post on it.
Depends on the deal or deals they had. The bottom line is they didn’t agree. You can still buy the paper books from other sources at Amazon. You just can’t do it with one click. Big deal.
I have wondered why Amazon doesn’t just publish ebooks themselves but then Lulu is not a bad source of books.
I do spend a lot of time reading on an LED but I turn the brightness down and I normally gray the background in text. New monitors with factory settings are great for watching video but way to bright for reading or using word.
#14 Dodgema –
You are blaming Amazon?
Steve Jobs went to McMaillan and said “You can sell your books at whatever price you want to charge, as long as you no longer make them available on the Kindle”. So McMillan says to Amazon “We have made a deal with Apple and you may not sell our books electronically anymore.” Amazon then says “What? Screw that! You won’t let us sell your books electronically? OK fine, we won’t sell your books at all.”
Result: Higher prices, less choice. In other words.. the Apple way.
Apple screws consumers again, and the fanboys cheer.
This is already over. Amazon capitulated.
http://tinyurl.com/yd3hezf
Hip hip hooray!
It looks like an iPhone for Shaq.
Amazon has given in to Macmillan, and will switch to a pricing model that sees bestseller and new hardcover releases offered to customers at $12.99 to $14.99. The official statement is as follows:
Dear Customers:
Macmillan, one of the “big six” publishers, has clearly communicated to us that, regardless of our viewpoint, they are committed to switching to an agency model and charging $12.99 to $14.99 for e-book versions of bestsellers and most hardcover releases.
We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles. We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books. Amazon customers will at that point decide for themselves whether they believe it’s reasonable to pay $14.99 for a bestselling e-book. We don’t believe that all of the major publishers will take the same route as Macmillan. And we know for sure that many independent presses and self-published authors will see this as an opportunity to provide attractively priced e-books as an alternative.
Kindle is a business for Amazon, and it is also a mission. We never expected it to be easy!
Thank you for being a customer.
We need to rethink what a newspaper and magazine is. This ipad will try to reproduce the paper format. I own a Kindle, and it’s not good a periodicals because of layout problems. Both the KIndle and the ipad are closed ecosystems. You have to use itunes or amazon. The technology needs to mature a few more years to color eink, OLED, or something new.
I’m glad most of you guys are Apple haters. That means I will get my iPad even sooner than if you were taking up a space in line. I like my Kindle but it’s a one trick pony. And I read on LCD screens all day at work and my eyes are fine. The iPad is a device of convenience…and I live for convenience.
And every knock against the iPad is the same knocks that were hurled at the iPod…which now owns 80% of the portable music market. The same knocks at the iPhone…which has sold 50 million units and is redefining the smart phone market.
And as of this post….Amazon has relented on Macmillan pushing for new pricing.
Mute point since Amazon has caved. Another giant leap forward for piracy!
http://tiny.cc/o4CuF
#2
But then we wont have anything to argue about will we? Enjoy the “good” news reporting like the rest of us. At least there’s no one name beck around here. You might be thinking Cherman, but he’s still working up the latter of failed.
“iPAD” – Isn’t that a feminine hygiene product?
It’s weird cause Apple almost always ends up acting like a bunch of male sex-organs.
I can just see the future law suits claiming that printed books will be infringing on Apple’s rights somehow. I’m also sure the revisionist’s history (you Apple fan boys in particular) will eventually start claiming that Steve Jobbs was the true inventor of “movable type” too.
Awake #17
Actually I have been blaming Apple as starting it with a “you and him fight” sort of deal.
I was not aware of Jobs’ ultimatium, but sort of suspected it. I just thought it was weird that Amazon pulled ALL Macmillan books in print. Buying from 3rd parties screws the publisher,which doesn’t bother me, and the author, which does.
Believe me, I am not now or ever have been an Apple fan.
#23,
Incorrect, iTunes owns 80% of the paid music market. It is still dwarfed by piracy.
And Im watching the Grammys right now, and Apple has won exactly nothing…
As pointed out elsewhere, Amazon capitulates to Macmillan. Saying that “Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles” may be the whiniest thing I’ve read this year.
I do like my iPod Touch, but I hate iTunes because it is some of the buggiest software I have ever encountered. At least for the PC….and that is a huge customer base they are pissing off.