Most e-bestsellers sold on the iPad’s e-book store should cost between $12.99 and $14.99, like on other e-book stores, but some bestsellers could be sold at a discount.
Even before the iPad was unveiled, book publishers had engaged in a price dispute with e-book retailers like Amazon and Barnes & Nobles. Publishers wanted retailers to raise e-book prices and even threatened to withhold e-book on the grounds that Amazon’s ubiquitous $9.99 price point could threaten sales of printed versions. Then came the iPad, the device that gave publishers much needed leverage against the likes of Amazon and Barnes & Nobbles.
As Geek reported last month, Apple set the ground for pricier e-books ahead of the iPad launch. Steve Jobs during his iPad presentation acknowledged Amazon for opening up the e-reading market:
Amazon has done a great job of pioneering this functionality with their Kindle. We’re gonna stand on their shoulders and go a bit further.
A short video interview that a famed Wall Street Journal tech columnist Walt Mossberg conducted with Steve Jobs following the iPad introduction last month (full transcript) confirmed the notion. Jobs told Mossberg that publishers pick the price on the iBook store, not Apple. The Cupertino firm keeps a standard 30 percent cut to itself, handing the remaining 70 percent to publishers. All five major publishers pledged to those terms: Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan, the Penguin Group, and Simon & Schuster.
The CEO also told the columnist that most e-books on the iBook store will be priced “the same” as their Kindle and Nook counterparts. But publishers are pressuring Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, and other digital bookstores to raise $9.99 editions to $14.99. Their iBook counterparts will undoubtedly follow the suit, right? Not so fast. Apple wouldn’t be Apple if it hadn’t secured a special treatment for its store.
According to the New York Times, publishers and Apple have struck a deal that gives Apple a certain degree of pricing flexibility, but only as “an option.” Sourced told the newspaper that most new bestsellers would sell between $12.99 and $14.99 max on the iBook store:
Apple inserted provisions requiring publishers to discount e-book prices on best sellers – so that $12.99-to-$14.99 range was merely a ceiling; prices for some titles could be lower, even as low as Amazon’s $9.99. For example, a book that started at $14.99 would drop to $12.99 or less once it hit the best-seller lists.
For example, Apple wants the hottest books, the stuff that’s on the New York Times best-seller lists, to sell discounted. When it comes to hardcover editions priced up to $26, the report noted, their iBook store counterparts might be priced “much lover than $12.99″ Publishers allegedly agreed, which is probably their way of saying ‘thank you’ to Apple and its iPad for hiking up the $9.99 e-books to $14.99. Whichever way you think of it, there’s a high likelihood that those $9.99 e-books on the Kindle Store will rise to between $12.99 and $14.99 by the time the iPad launches in March.
Read more at the New York Times.
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