Rather than selling e-books wholesale, according to the newsletter, publishers are attempting to negotiate a deal in which they retain ownership of the titles and license Apple to distribute them on a commission basis. Distributors would pay only for the books they “sold” at a fixed rate independent of the retail price.
“While some consumers might resist publishers' pricing under this model, it is a way of offering e-book owners access to new high-profile releases simultaneous with hardcover release,” it said.
Ownership of e-books is already a hot issue within the industry, with almost all players hoping to enforce some form of “digital rights management” in the distribution of their products. This often means that “buyers” of e-books are unable to lend, trade or resell the titles, as they are with print books.
The new digital cornucopia is wonderful, according to Darren Wershler, professor of communications at Ontario's Wilfrid Laurier University. “But I'm profoundly distrustful of anybody who comes along and offers to consolidate all that for me,” he added. “I don't want them making choices about what I'm reading, where I can get it, what format it's in, which machines I can look at it on. All of those things are a real problem, and nobody ever talks about them.”
Apple did win plaudits yesterday by embracing an open software standard for formatting e-books, called “epub,” that makes it possible to read them on any devices that use the same standard. By contrast, Amazon uses a proprietary format for Kindle, which forces customers to shop at its store exclusively.
The iPad also has the sex appeal notably lacking in the Amazon reader. “The Kindle looks like it was designed in a Russian tractor factory,” Mr. Wershler said. “The aesthetics of the thing are horrifying.”
But Apple clearly has bigger game in mind than the traditional reader who values a good page-turner in crisp black and white. Whatever ultimately emerges from the tablet revolution would likely be unrecognizable today, according to Mr. Wershler. “To call what we're reading on our phones and our computers today e-books is like calling a car a horseless carriage,” he said.
Amazon has done “a great job” priming the market with the Kindle, Mr. Jobs said after an hour's chat about the iPad's talent in music and drama. “But we're going to stand on their shoulders and go a bit further.”
With files from Susan Krashinsky
