iBooks Textbook Sales: Authors Set Pricing Up to $14.99, Apple Takes 30%, iBooks-Exclusive

[benpatient]

I work with a small independent publisher that makes math books for homeschool curriculum. Potentially the perfect audience for this...but their margins are already incredibly slim, and the exclusivity and price caps Apple has just announced here make it so far outside the realm of possibility as a viable digital option that it won't even be considered.

We don't have a single book under 600 pages. You can't generate original scholastic-quality content for $15 a book.

Every "book" on this service is going to be glorified wikipedia pages, because all of the content is going to be taken from wikipedia.

 

[KPOM]

$14.99 cap, i.e. Never expect any major textbooks that you will need for classes to come to iPad.

They'll break up the books into smaller parts or chapters to get around this. People said the same thing about $0.99 individual songs.

Anyway, exclusivity might be the bigger barrier, particularly if Amazon comes along with a similar product that allows authors and publishers to sell outside their store.

 

[Rodimus Prime]

Exclusivity means this deal is DOA.

Yeah that is my view as well. I have some friends who would want to publish some work of theirs but this exclusivity thing kills them doing it. It is complete and utter crap and makes it doa.

 

[Senseotech]

This format needs to be a standard. MP3 audio, MPEG-4 video, EPUB ebooks.

This is cool, but the negatives of creating vendor lock in more than offsets any positives.

EPUB technically is an open standard, but much like mpeg4/H.264 video, it also allows for a DRM wrapper.

 

[CmdrLaForge]

No freaking way that I would publish on iBook exclusive. Of course the book must be listed on Amazon Kindle as well as that is a better option in my opinion anyway.

 

[The Phazer]

Exclusive?

DOA.

Absolutely, insanely stupid.

Phazer

 

[phillipduran]

$14.99 cap, i.e. Never expect any major textbooks that you will need for classes to come to iPad.

It might be worth it when the publishers don't need to print, store and ship large paper text books that need to be distributed via trucks to the whole world. How much does that take from potential profits?

Here is how it might be now:
1. Make iBook
2. Click upload button
3. ?????
4. Profit

 

[charlituna]

Apple takes 30%........isnt that the norm for Apple??? why is this earth shattering to some people?????

It's the price cap and the ibooks only that folks are shattered by.

I think the cap is a good idea although perhaps a tad low. I think that no more than $29.99 is still very reasonable.

As for the other, Apple is free to set whatever rules they want and folks are free not to agree to them. You can still make your own app for your 'textbook' and set your own price, port it to Android etc.

Hopefully we wont see Chapter 1: $14.99, Chapter 2 $14.99, Chapter 3 $14.99 etc.

Nah, you'll just see Edition 1: $14.99, Edition 2: $14.99, etc. "It's totally different!"

I suspect that Apple has already considered both of these notions and nipped them in the bud with their rules

 

[Durendal]

The $14.99 cap means that major textbooks will almost certainly never appear on the iPad. Kudos to Apple for keeping the prices down so students don't get bent over, but honestly, I don't see this getting used for all but a few scattered classes.

 

[C00rDiNaT0r]

Theres no way that many of these college publishers, with there greedy, money-grabbing yearly "updates", are going to sell a book for $14.99.

Nobody is really stopping them from breaking the $500 Bio/chem textbook into 100 volumes, selling at $14.99 each.

 

[dethmaShine]

Exclusive to iBooks only?

What nonsense.

 

[Senseotech]

Everyone complaining about exclusivity is just making a mountain out of a molehill. If you're making a great textbook, with the interactive media and everything, good luck getting it to run on a kindle. If you want to cripple the book and have a text-only version for e-ink, label them as different versions and release wherever you like.

 

[swarmster]

This exclusivity stuff is a load of ****. Google needs to step up and create an open HTML5 based textbook format. Something that can run in an app, or in a browser.

Don't worry, now that Apple has a product out there and available, Google can start "thinking" about what they want to do!

 

[tkoerten]

Too cheap for Publishers to buy in.

If I were a book publisher I would have no incentive to do this. Publishers are interested in money, not making better textbooks. Currently, a college textbook costs about $200. Lowering the price to $14.99 with a 30% price cut will greatly reduce their profits.

The only benefit for the is that it will stop the used book market, but that is not a big enough incentive to lower prices to $14.99.

I agree that apple has the right to take 30%, but I believe in this case it is not necessary because they are already getting all of the profit from the students being required to buy an iPad since the books are exclusive for the iPad. I think it would benefit apple more if they increased textbook prices to $24.99 and only took 10%. This would give Apple a decent cut, but it would also cause the publishers to have a greater incentive to switch to this format of textbooks.

 

[chris200x9]

This is actually really great, too bad it's exclusive.

 

[charlituna]

Exclusivity means this deal is DOA.

Or not. Funny thing about Apple is that they will do things that folks say is insane and will never work. And then it totally does.

If anything they perhaps should have done this a year ago with the iPad 2.

 

[C00rDiNaT0r]

Exclusive?

DOA.

Absolutely, insanely stupid.

Phazer

What's really stopping authors/publishers from retaining (mostly) the same content and label it with a different title to sell on other platforms?

 

[bushido]

i dont think many textbook publishers will even bother. there are barely digital textbooks as it is and why should they spent more money on it if they can only sell it in one place. thats just more money they would waste on training their employers to even develop such ebooks

 

[charlituna]

They understand not bleeding students in terms of maximum price, but still want to bleed teachers with their percentage.

Most of these books are coming from the same major textbook companies that are making crazy bank on college textbooks etc. Not the little old lady that teaches high school English and takes care of 12 cats

 

[iOrlando]

Tough crowd (although it always seems like these threads are extremely brutal).

I find it funny how some are saying this whole thing (I assume they are referring to textbooks on iPad) is DOA unless it is open to other devices.

What other avenues would you like? The $79 Kindles? An interactive textbook designed for iPad you want on the $79 Kindle? Okay.

Or how about having all of the titles available on RIMM playbooks?

On the web? So a touch interface textbook designed to be used anywhere, is negated to a desktop or laptop computer? Okay.


The biggest obstacle for textbooks isn't device exclusivity, its getting School Boards to approve iPad purchases for their students.

 

[diamond.g]

The biggest obstacle for textbooks isn't device exclusivity, its getting School Boards to approve iPad purchases for their students.

With school budgets shrinking (in some areas) it will be a tough sell.

 

[charlituna]

Every "book" on this service is going to be glorified wikipedia pages, because all of the content is going to be taken from wikipedia.

If you're writing it, sure. But take a gander at the major textbook companies that have already signed on to do this. You really think McGraw Hill is going to just copy from wikipedia.

Seems to me that your issue isn't the quality of the books but the fact that texts by places like McGraw Hill that used to be unavailable to homeschool students due to the higher prices aren't anymore so there's perhaps not as much need for your special service for such kids.

 

[Maury]

Well, the books only work on iPads. I think that the exclusivity is not about the ebook, but the content.

I'm not sure it's even that… the demo videos shows content that already exists outside the iBooks world.

I can't imagine anyone would use the system if it meant you couldn't release the same content -- which you own -- on other platforms, including paper.

----------

Every "book" on this service is going to be glorified wikipedia pages, because all of the content is going to be taken from wikipedia.

As the author of some 7500 Wikipedia articles, many of them by far the best on their topics…

GOOD

 

[arn]

Some things are unclear, so the article is being demoted to a blog post.

So, if you create an iBook using iBooks Author, then yes, you must sell through Apple's store only. So, it seems like the final product is iTunes exclusive. But you must be able to recreate the content elsewhere in another format using not Apple's tool.

arn

 

[smoledman]

iBookstore is great for Apple, not great for publishers or consumers who get vendor lockin for something this important.