I’m a fan of publishers taking charge of their own destiny, especially when the future is so uncertain.
That said, I just don’t think publishers have the right skill sets right now to actually set prices for consumer facing products.
They need to work very hard to get those skills though, because, as long as they are setting prices without knowing what they are doing, the longer they’ll make bad decisions and probably hurt themselves in the long term.
More than three-quarters of people working in the book trade believe e-books should be priced at current street prices or less, according to early results of a FutureBook survey into digital thinking. The majority of respondents indicated that publishers are best placed to set this price, even though they don’t believe the agency model has a long-term future.
Trouble, strife and fallout from the agency model is blowing about in the Uk, watch this space!
Hachette e-books have been removed from the websites of Waterstone’s, W H Smith, Tesco and The Book Depository after the publisher said it would move to agency terms from today (20th September). But Amazon.co.uk is still selling Hachette titles on the Kindle, and appears to still be setting the prices.
It’s on sale now!
The company’s website is warning that iPad orders made now will not be sent out until 7 June. It sold more than 1m iPads in the US in the first 100 days after the April launch, making it a faster seller than the iPhone. Here
Welcome to Agency Town
After weeks of no-comment the three publishers finally released statements on their move to the Apple agency model at 10am today at Apple’s request, though The Bookseller broke the news an hour earlier. Here
Consumers will do what consumers will do
But John Herbert, 42, city analyst, said: “It does books? I might in the end read e-books on it, but it’s not my main reason for getting one. I’m thinking about movies, music, the web; something for the commute, really Here
Available on the island, just not the southern end of it
APPLE ENTHUSIASTS in Ireland will be able to get their hands on the iPad from today as it goes on sale in the United Kingdom, including Northern Ireland. Here
Tom Tivnan love iBooks
my first thought on iBooks: yeah, this is the real deal. Miles ahead of the Sony Reader, Kindle or any other e-reader on the market. I have been reading e-books on the iPhone, but the far bigger size of the screen adds a new dimension. The ‘flip’ page technology is smooth and comes as close to a real book experience as you are likely to get digitally. After having a look at this, I can’t really see anyone ever wanting a monochrome e-reader. Here
The FT injects some reality, which is nice!
In other words, analysts trying to calculate the iPad’s prospects in Europe would do well to remember that the continent’s patchwork of publishers and local laws make simple pan-European deals unlikely. Apple’s relatively small European team has been advertising for publisher account managers. On the evidence so far, they will be busy. Here
And so does Charlie Brooker
I doubt many readers will persevere to the final page of a novel, unless it’s a book in which the lead character squints a lot, in which case you’ll have a certain empathy. Here
Mediabistro & publishing perspective’s Edward Nawotka throw out interesting thoughts
Nawotka concluded: “The Europeans tend to be more conservative. It’s taken them somewhat longer to get into eBooks. You can see that reflected in the way they dealt with the iPad launch. It’s no secret that this is going to be a trendsetting device. I’m getting pictures in from Australia, the UK, and Germany–the Apple Stores are just thronged. A lot of the publishers just waited until the last minute to sign up and get their stuff ready.” Here
And we have an early bestseller!
Chris Evans’ memoir, It’s Not What You Think (HarperCollins), is the early ebook bestseller at Apple’s iBookstore. The book, recently released in a mass-market format with an r.r.p. of £7.99 has been selling at around £5.20 at UK bookshops on average in recent weeks. But at a bargain £3.99, the ebook has shot to the top of the UK iBooks chart. Here
Eoin Purcell's Blog 