Random House titles now available at U.S. iBookstore, not in Canada

At Wednesday’s launch of the iPad 2 in San Francisco, Apple CEO Steve Jobs confirmed that 17,000 titles from Random House U.S. will now be available in Apple’s iBookstore. Titles began appearing on the iBooks app prior to the press conference.

The partnership comes as no surprise after Random House announced that it was adopting Apple’s agency pricing model Monday — the last of the major U.S. publishing companies to do so. The pricing shift gives publishers 70 per cent of each sale, with a 30 per cent commission to retailers.

Random House Canada has no immediate plans to follow the U.S.’s lead. Senior vice president, director of marketing and corporate communications Tracey Turriff writes, “Random House of Canada’s digital terms of sale remain unchanged at this time. New commercial models in the fast changing eBook environment are constantly under review. We continue to evaluate our options and talk to all etailers as it is our mission to ensure that our authors’ books are available on all platforms to all potential customers. Our strategy is constantly evolving in the best interests both of our authors and consumers.”

Jobs said that since the iPad was launched in April 2010, customers have downloaded more than 100 million e-books from the iBookstore, with over 2,500 publishers represented.

The lighter, sleeker, faster iPad 2 will be available in Canada on March 25.

Google Editions to launch before year’s end

Representatives from Google met with publishers at the Frankfurt Book Fair this week and revealed that the long-awaited Google Editions will debut (in the U.S., at least) this year, despite rumours to the contrary. According to The Bookseller:

Abraham Murray, product manager on Google’s Books team, said at launch in the U.S. there would be over 400,000 paid-for titles available from “publisher partners,” along with two million public domain titles, but that more titles would be made available once the service opened internationally [in 2011]. He said the company was working with more than 35,000 publisher partners, in more than 100 countries, and added that he hoped to launch in “much of Europe in first half of the following year.”

However, there are already signs that Google Editions might not be the saviour publishers were hoping for. Though Google plans to use the publisher-preferred agency pricing model, the Google rep admitted this was not a model Google had sought out and hinted that it might be subject to change:

“We will meet the needs of the market, and we are accepting the agency model in the U.S., but we haven’t gone after it, and as that plays out we will follow,” he said.

Price drop rumored for Kobo eReader

When it launched in May, one of the Kobo eReader’s big selling points was that it was one of the cheapest e-reading devices on the market at $149. But now, with Barnes & Noble selling the new wi-fi Nook for $149, and Amazon selling the new wi-fi Kindle for $139, the Kobo eReader – which requires a Bluetooth connection – suddenly has a lot less to recommend it. No surprise, then, that a Kobo price drop appears to be in the works. Though nothing has been announced officially as of yet, a current online-only piece in The New Yorker suggests that Kobo will be lowering prices very soon.

Reporting on a swanky rooftop party Kobo recently hosted in Toronto, The New Yorker had this to say:

Kobo is perhaps the scrappiest and most focussed player in the e-book war. Its online store has a vast and rapidly expanding catalogue of e-books that can be read on almost any mobile device (notable exception: the Kindle). And its own e-reader’s simplicity and affordability (it will reportedly be down to $99 in time for Christmas) has spawned a cult following. In Amazon’s rear-view mirror, Kobo is quickly gaining ground.

When asked by Q&Q to confirm the $99 rumor, Kobo vice-president of content, sales, and merchandising Michael Tamblyn said he wasn’t currently at liberty to comment on future pricing.

Daily book biz round-up, March 30

More book news for you all:

• iBooks pricing model leaked
• Kobo to go to agency model
• Let the media slobbering begin: new Stephenie Meyer title announced
• BookCamp 2010 is open for registration
• French publisher Gallimard to sue Google
• The Economist attempts to soothe its aging readers’ nerves
• Mike Shatzkin wonders why anyone wonders about Random House not teaming with Apple
• The Guardian wants your help in identifying these kids’ books

Daily book biz round-up, March 25

Here’s today’s book news:

• Publishers Weekly takes temperature of Bologna Children’s Book Fair
• Will Random House ever be on the iPad?
• More conjecture on Apple’s book pricing plans
• Newbery-winner Sid Fleischman dies
• Harold W. McGraw Jr. (of McGraw-Hill fame) dies, too
• British spy novel geek to auction off private library
• Shane Koyczan performs “Swiftly” for the National Post

HarperCollins steps into the ring of the Amazon vs. Macmillan battle

While Amazon has yet to fully reinstate Macmillan titles on its website, another potential threat looms on the horizon for the online retailer. Rupert Murdoch, chairman and CEO of News Corp. – the huge media conglomerate that owns HarperCollins – said about e-readers during a conference call yesterday that “devices and platforms are proliferating, but this clever technology is merely an empty vessel without any great content.” Further taking the side of the publishers in the Amazon vs. Macmillan battle, Murdoch had this to say (via All Things Digital):

We don’t like the Amazon model of selling everything at $9.99. They don’t pay us that. They pay us the full wholesale price of $14 or whatever we charge. We think it really devalues books and it hurts all the retailers of the hardcover books. We are not against [inaudible] books. On the contrary, we like them very much indeed. It is low cost to us and so on. But we want some room to maneuver in it.

Murdoch also said that Apple has already agreed to “a variety of higher prices” for e-books, and that Amazon is ready to renegotiate pricing with News Corp. Will the clout of a publisher like HarperCollins force Amazon to allow higher prices? Will customers be willing to cough up more than $9.99 for an e-book, despite online protests? Or will the higher prices deter readers from investing in the high-priced Kindle at all?

One thing’s for sure: the publishing industry is being brought together by a common enemy, as demonstrated today at the America Booksellers Association’s Winter Institute. Galleycat reports that when Macmillan’s stand against Amazon was mentioned at the event, the company received an enthusiastic standing ovation.

Will Kindle be the Betamax of the decade?

In the race to win consumer confidence (or, well, interest) in e-readers, one can’t help but wonder how we’ll look back on the recent Kindle vs. Sony hardware wars. With Google planting flags, and Amazon opposing the Google settlement, The Globe and Mail‘s king of tech nerds, Brian Joseph Davis, suggests the Kindle could go the way of ColecoVision, the Commodore 64, or even the once beloved Betamax.

My money is still on Sony this week as they’ve entered the fray of the Google settlement crisis. They’re on the side of Google Books. Sony’s Reader displays any e-book format and supports file copying on up to six devices. The Reader and Google are a good match.

On the other side is Amazon with their Kindle (which is a proprietary-file-laden piece of poo). Stepping into that corner with legal and monetary support, just because they hate Google, is the axis of Microsoft and Yahoo.

Meanwhile, blogger B.Kienapple weighs in on the e-reader battle, discussing the Google-supported, UK-based Interead, the company behind the Cool-er e-reader. Now that Google has provided “books” for the terribly named Cool-er, she wonders who will actually read said materials:

Academics? School kids? Everyone knows that Amazon has the selection and pricing down pat. This is the sad fact of the matter.

Also, while the Cool-er e-store is now well stocked, you may not want to read them on the Cool-er’s own e-reader. The review that came in from Gizmodo earlier this year indicated that problems abound. My biggest complaint, from what I can see in the review, is the computer-like font. The Sony and Kindle both mimic print type (easier on the eyes, I do think). The Cool-er’s functionality looks entirely primitive, too.

While it’s easy to mock twitchy-texting, Twitter-obsessed blogger-types, many of those same tech-savvy users remain staunchly old-fashioned when it comes to e-readers. Maybe if one came in a swag bag filled with free “books” this Quillblogger might accept it, if only to take on a plane thereby avoiding the ache of heavy luggage.

But you may want to hum a bar of “Video Killed the Radio Star” and keep a curious eye on the tech pages as the e-reader war unfolds. You wouldn’t want to resemble your uncle clinging to his eight-track tapes.

Amazon: more than just a bookstore

Time magazine book critic and tech columnist Lev Grossman follows up his report earlier this year about the future of literature with a new article, written with reporter Andrea Sachs, examining the impact Amazon is having on the publishing industry. “If Amazon is a bookstore,” the authors write, “it’s supposed to be buying from publishers, not competing with them. Right?” The answer, of course, is that Amazon isn’t just a bookstore anymore:

… Amazon has diversified itself so comprehensively over the past five years that it’s hard to say exactly what it is anymore. Amazon has a presence in almost every niche of the book industry. It runs a print-on-demand service (BookSurge) and a self-publishing service (CreateSpace). It sells e-books and an e-device to read them on (the Kindle, a new version of which, the DX, went on sale June 10). In 2008 alone, Amazon acquired Audible.com, a leading audiobooks company; AbeBooks, a major online used-book retailer; and Shelfari, a Facebook-like social network for readers. In April of this year, it snapped up Lexcycle, which makes an e-reading app for the iPhone called Stanza. And now there’s Amazon Encore, which makes Amazon a print publisher too.

As Grossman and Sachs put it, Amazon is “the most forward-thinking company in the book business.” Whether or not that’s a good thing depends on if you’re a book buyer or a publisher, they argue.

U2 and Madonna don’t have deals with record labels anymore; they did their deals with a concert promoter, LiveNation. That stuff that the labels used to do – production, promotion, distribution – it’s just not that hard to DIY now or buy off the shelf. It’s the same with publishing. Amazon could become the LiveNation of the book world, a literary ecosystem unto itself: agent, editor, publisher, printer and bookstore.

Still, as the authors rightly point out, while Amazon has the power to hurt publishers, it’s likely not in a position to mortally wound them. On the contentious issue of e-book pricing, for example, the industry is beginning to fight back against Amazon’s lowball $9.99 price tag on many of its best-selling e-books, an unsustainble price point aimed at fueling Kindle sales. Yesterday, Simon & Schuster announced it was bypassing the Kindle store altogether, making 5,000 titles available through Scribd, a social media platform that allows users to share and sell their own work. The S&S-set price – 20% off the hardcover price – is one that many publishers, not to mention authors, will find more sustainable.

Amazon kindles a price war

It may not be the equivalent of the sans-coulottes rising en masse during the French Revolution or a student facing down a tank in Tiananmen Square, but there appears to be a grassroots uprising of sorts developing around the pricing of e-books sold through Amazon for use on their Kindle readers. According to Galleycat, a group of almost 250 Amazon users have initiated a boycott of Kindle titles priced at more than $9.99. These currently include bestselling titles such as The Secret, David McCullough’s biography of Harry Truman, and the new novel by Harlan Coben.

There are currently 808 titles on Amazon with the “9 99 boycott” tag, including some (like Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer) that are sold at $9.99 on the nose.

Not surprisingly, most of the online commentary supports the rebellion: it’s another example of the people making their voices heard against the greedhead publishers and corporate behemoths. And to be fair, many of the arguments the boycotters are making have merit: Kindle e-books are not as permanent or as versatile as actual books (they can’t be marked up, lent out, or printed out), and there is a tradition of electronic content on the Web being priced more modestly than its physical counterpart (one reason why iTunes became so popular).

Still, it’s fallacious to presume that e-books don’t cost publshers anything to produce (even without the cost of paper, printing, and warehousing, there are acquisitions and editorial costs to be factored into the equation), and they are still getting gutted on their margins for regular books by sites like Amazon, which demand steep discounts on the titles they sell. Mark-ups for e-books may seem like price gouging on the part of publishers (and this may indeed be the case), but the bottom line is that this segment of the market is still negligible, and publishers need to make money if they want to survive. Perhaps the solution is to sell more e-books at a lower unit cost; whether or not the Amazon boycott has this effect remains to be seen.

Your iPhone (or iPod touch) as bargain hunter

As a buyer, I’ll admit to occasionally putting a book down because I want to compare prices with another bookstore or check the Internet at home. Apparently some iPhone programmers have too, because some of them created Snaptell, an app that, by simply photographing the cover of a book (or CD, or DVD, or video game), will automatically compare its price to those on the Internet and every store in your local area.

Understandably, the existence of such a technology is making some booksellers nervous. But as the L.A. Times notes, it’s unlikely book buyers will be willing to drive 20 minutes or spend another token on the subway just to save $2. And online sellers conveniently omit shipping and handling from their prices, which can easily add another $5 to the cover price (unless you’re spending more than $35 to begin with). So the only sellers who really need to worry are the ones who charge $5 or $10 more than the others, and they should be lowering their prices anyway.

As a customer, you have to admit it sounds convenient.