Details are starting to resurface on Amazon’s plans to launch it’s answer to the digital book revolution (hopefully something cool, unlike the previous mockup from Engadget).
Will publishers play nicer than other old media companies(and learn from other’s mistakes) is yet to be said. For people to overcome the weirdness of not reading a paper book it has to be easy to purchase and use, at reasonable prices. This would be a great device to go with an O’Reilly Safari subscription. I think books purchase could easily go both the subscription as well as a la carte model. All books are not created equal, since you might want to keep a Seth Godin book, but maybe not an “Mac OS 9 for Dummies” forever. It is all about content relevance.
Making prices reasonable is very important for ebooks to be a success. Books usually range from $26 on a hard cover to $6 on paperback. If they can profit from the paperbacks after printing, distribution and stocking inventory channels, I am sure they can sell them for roughly $1.99 just like iTunes TV shows. (Once again, I am not a cheap bastard, it’s just that the authors were going to get a buck anyway).
The true winners will ultimately be long tail publishers like LuLu which are focusing the many book niches overlooked by the big guys.
More than the device itself, I am curious to see how many publishers are going to offer their brand new hard cover books fresh off the press in a digital version.
(Via WSJ.com.)
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