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Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Are eBook Price Increases on iPad Hurting Business?


According to Publishers Marketplace research by Michael Cader, as spoon-fed by other publishing indies, the higher prices charged for ebooks on iPad's iBooks app (the so-called agency model, where the publishers set price rather than the retailer, e.g. Kindle)...has NOT resulted in any loss of customers! On the contrary, business is booming with iPads selling approximately one million in April and the iBooks app of iPad quickly becoming the most popular feature...some books on iPad even outselling the same books on Kindle!

The fact that higher prices on iPad are successful is VERY BIG because I (badly pictured at left above) personally feel that the new, fledgling agency model (and it's future offspring) will positively affect future worth of content...and subsequently authors' pay. When the public domain & hashed over content being used as fillers for these devices today wears thin and/or gets a little boring...new, fresher content will be in high demand to satisfy the ever-hungry-gadget-reading public...which is GROWING by the way...day by day!

I predict content demand and price, and therefore authors' pay, will increase in the future! There are industry professionals that disagree with me on this point, but, I feel it's the only way things can shake out and be true to the creative process.

Just let the dust and uproar settle down a little bit more due to "newy" e-devices and rapidly changing business models...More people are reading content faster on faster delivery systems today than ever before and will be demanding evermore content faster...What's that old axiom about supply & demand?

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