There’s been a lot of hoopla the past week over Amazon’s fight with book publisher Macmillan. The main issue is that Macmillan wants higher prices for its e-books, while Amazon wants to keep prices down for its Kindle device. Amazon went as far as to pull all of Macmillan’s books from its store, but quickly admitted that they’d eventually have to give in to Macmillan’s demands . Why? Well the obvious answer is Apple, whose new iPad device with its iBooks Store is allowing publishers to set higher prices. But don’t forget Amazon’s other rivals too. One reader wrote in to tell us how he was looking for The Politician , a new book by Andrew Young about John Edwards. The book, which is published by Macmillan, is not available on Amazon.com right now due to the dispute. When the man noticed that he turned to Amazon rival Barnes & Noble for the book — and from the looks of it, he’s not alone. The book is actually the number one best seller on Barnes & Noble’s entire site. On another rival’s site, Borders , it’s the number five best seller. Pressure from Apple aside, Amazon can’t afford to blackball these publishers because people can so easily turn elsewhere to get the book. Even though it’s not available on Amazon, The Politician is still the number 49 best seller on the site through partner sellers — even though they’re selling the book for significantly more than Barnes & Noble or Borders (or than Amazon would if it were available through them). [thanks Shmuel]
A new development in the Amazon vs. Macmillan fiasco. Amazon just posted an announcement indicating that it will be “capitulating” to Macmillan by selling the publishers’ books for their desired prices. Macmillan is trying to price their e-books at $15, while Amazon prices e-books at $9.99. Macmillan’s CEO John Sargent said that unless Amazon sets the price of new e-books to $15, the publisher will not distribute new books to Amazon when they are released. On Friday, Amazon basically banned titles, both paper and digital, published by Macmillan by refusing to directly sell them. And Macmillan took out an ad in the Publishers Marketplace magazine protesting the tactics being used by Amazon regarding pricing. Amazon is now giving into Macmillan’s demands because of the publisher’s monopoly over its titles. In a passive aggressive manner, Amazon says that readers will decide whether it’s reasonable to pay $14.99 for e-books. And that other publishers will compete by offering their books and lower prices. Apple CEO Steve Jobs said last week that publishers were unhappy with Amazon’s pricing mode, foreshadowing this disagreement with Macmillan. Jobs revealed that publishers are withholding their titles from Amazon because of Amazon’s pricing model. Jobs also said that prices for books on Apple’s new tablet device, the iPad, will be the same as Amazon’s pricing. Here is Amazon’s announcement: 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’re still not about say the e-book reader industry has branched out beyond the infancy stage, but one of its flagship products certainly has reason to celebrate. Amazon has announced it’s hit some pretty big milestones with the Kindle . The two bullet points it’s currently touting loudest is that the reader has become “the most gifted item” in the company’s history — quite an achievement given the size of the online retailer, but what’s missing here is any quantitative sales data to give us even a ballpark of the number of units sold. The other big news is that on Christmas Day (we’re guessing not Christmas Eve, else the press release surely would’ve mentioned it, too), e-book sales actually outsold physical books. Those brand new Kindle owners needed something to read, right? It’ll be interesting to see if that momentum is maintained through next year, especially with some major publishers starting to show some teeth with digital delays. The Kindle bits were all part of Amazon’s annual post-holiday statistical breakdown, so in case you’re wondering, besides Kindle, the company is claiming its other top-selling electronics were the 8GB iPod Touch and Garmin nuvi260W, and in the wireless department the honor goes to Nokia’s unlocked 5800 XpressMusic, Plantronic’s 510 Bluetooth headset, and AT&T’s edition of the BlackBerry Bold 9700. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in] Kindle most gifted item in Amazon’s history, e-books outsell physical tomes on Christmas Day originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 27 Dec 2009 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink | Amazon | Email this | Comments
The de facto place to buy Kindle books is, of course, Amazon. Given how tightly this allows Bezos & Co. to manage things we’re guessing this is how the company would like to keep it, but there may be direct-to-kindle competition brewing from an unlikely source: Scribd. The site, which started off as a place to dump and share random documents, has been following the YouTube path and is now and selling access to fully copyrighted works. Many of those works are downloadable as text, Word, or PDF documents, meaning Kindle users can already work some conversion magic and get them on their devices. But, according to Scribd CEO Trip Adler, straight to Kindle distribution is next. The question is: will they be for-pay titles, or only the billions of pages of free content the site offers? Places like Feedbooks and Gutenberg.org let you download free content direct to the Kindle already, but we’re not aware of anyone selling content straight-to-Kindle yet — other than Amazon, of course. Scribd positioning self to become Amazon competitor, sell books on Kindle? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Dec 2009 07:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink | Gizmodo | Email this | Comments
The recently released e-book reader from Barnes & Noble, the Nook , has been rooted by the community of enthusiasts at nookdevs.com . The complete instructions for hacking the device and obtaining root access are detailed on the site . The Nook went on sale in late November and aims to compete with the dominant Amazon Kindle, a device which has spurred its own community of hackers and modifiers. The Nook retails for $259, and is an Android-powered device with built in AT&T 3G service and WiFi, along with an e-ink screen that is found in most other readers. The instructions for rooting the device require that the device is opened up and that the SD card which stores the operating system be removed. The process seems a little too simple, almost as if the device was designed to be hacked. The storage is on a removable card, which can then be loaded in another machine where the process of acquiring root access to the operating system is carried out. This will likely lead to DRM controls being bypassed, and a slew of homebrew projects being created based on the hardware – which might ironically help Barnes & Noble in its bid to unseat both the Kindle and Sony e-Reader. Full detailed instructions and photographs are available on the site here. The entire process is straight forward and only takes around 30-45 minutes. I might actually order a Nook now. Tip via Nenad Nikolic ( @shonzilla ) Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
