Apple Commercial hints at iBook Pricing

[iDan]

While most might have been watching the new Apple iPad commercial in aw over all of the features, AppleInsider noticed that Apple might have given us a glimpse into the iBook Store pricing:

The commercial showed Sen. Edward Kennedy’s “True Compass: A Memoir” for $14.99, the novel “I, Alex Cross” by James Patterson for $12.99, and “Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Journey to Change the World… One Child at a Time” by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin for $7.99.

For comparison, “True Compass” currently sells for $19.25 for the Amazon Kindle, “I, Alex Cross” costs $9.99, and “Three Cups of Tea” costs $7.19.

Source: AppleInsider.com

 

[rob the elder]

They need to be competitive and right now Amazon has established the market value for Ebooks. Though even Amazon has been having a running battle with publishers on their pricing model. Amazon understands that distributing data at basically zero production cost is a good deal for the publishers while the publishers are worried that they are somehow loosing sales of higher price physical books. Personally I would rather go totally to E books if I were a publisher and cut my staff from hundreds to tens.

 

[iVan]

If I remember correctly, Mr. Jobs during his keynote, declared war with Amazon... :shrug:

People at Mobile Read had noticed this detail at the keynote. I wonder if there has been any changes with pricing...

 

[JohnnyApple]

Man, Apple is putting the Kibosh onto Amazon on multiple fronts.

 

[EARL97850]

I think I'm missing something....did Amazon piss of Apple somehow?

Cya

 

[lesags]

Don't know whether this is fact or not but I note on the UK site that the e-reader functionality isn't mentioned at all. The US site does state (in very small print) that the iBookstore is only available in the US. If this is so, then Apple are missing a big market.
I was looking at purchashing an e-reader but with the additional functionality and not too much more in price it made sense to look at the iPad. However, if I've got to go to the US to get books .........

 

[Dorje]

The problem is copy rights and ownership, distribution, and so on. You are not seeing an iBooks store outside the US mainly for those reasons right now. Same reason you get discrepancies in iTunes on everything from Music to Movies. I'm sure Apple is quite aware of the UK, and whole world when comes down it, market. They likely haven't managed to negotiate the rights or jumped through the legal hurdles to get to that point.

I would hope that Apple would allow UK(and other) consumers to download and use the iBook app and load their own digital reading material (if it will take other files besides ePub). If not, I'm sure the Amazon iPad(Kindle) App will be right there and ready to take your business.