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iBookstore Best Seller Prices Suddenly Jump to $12.99?

Not that big of a deal to me, as I only plan to buy mag subscriptions to start and a few newspaper subscriptions. Down the road I might get a few books, but by then I am sure the prices will have come down. I am still one of those people that likes to physically collect books. I like looking at my bookshelf and admiring my collection. Call me crazy if you must.
 
I currently own a Kindle and absolutely love it. I'm very tempted to purchase an iPad but I'm still not sure what kind of book selection will be available when it is released. Amazon currently offers a wide selection of books at a very reasonable price. Most of their best sellers are at $9.99.

Although $3.00 is not a huge difference in price I suspect that a lot of eBook enthusiasts might not be willing to pay this extra cost. Apple offering higher prices might not exactly encourage current Kindle owners to make the switch. If Apple approves the kindle iPad app I might be more willing to purchase an iPad. It would be nice to be able to read all of my Kindle eBooks as well as books purchased using the iBookstore.

Another thing to take note of is the fact that Apple will be charging more for newspaper subscriptions as well. Amazon charges $14.99 for a subscription to the Wall Street Journal while Apple will be charging $17.99. Again, a difference of $3.00. I'm aware that this decision was made by the Wall Street Journal and not Apple but I can't help but wonder how this will effect ones decision to purchase an iPad or not.
 
fifthworld said:
Many here make me laugh. Willing to pay 500 bucks for a device which is nothing without content, but than not wanting to pay 12.95 for an e-book (about 50% of the paper edition).
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Dont we all know, this is the interwebs, everyone wants their stuff free. Plus these forums are littered with what seems like poor folks who complain about .99cent apps.....
 
splashnader said:
Not that big of a deal to me, as I only plan to buy mag subscriptions to start and a few newspaper subscriptions. Down the road I might get a few books, but by then I am sure the prices will have come down. I am still one of those people that likes to physically collect books. I like looking at my bookshelf and admiring my collection. Call me crazy if you must.
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I'm with you on this, me and the wife built a library in our house out here in LA. Its nice to walk in a grab a book, something very Gatsby about it :D
 
fifthworld said:
Many here make me laugh. Willing to pay 500 bucks for a device which is nothing without content, but than not wanting to pay 12.95 for an e-book (about 50% of the paper edition).
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Well, seriously, though, if you can get the same title for the Kindle or Kindle app for $9.99, why would you pay $12.99? I agree, if both are $12.99 and the hardcover edition is $25, sure, it makes no difference and the eBook is still a better deal.
 
More power to them. I'm not going to spend any more on e-books than I want, and that limit is $10. actually, I hate spending more than $7.

For many years I had a "rule" that I wouldn't buy CD's unless they were less than $13. (that was back in the 80's)

In a similar vein, if the powers that be want to be greedy, I'll simply skip purchasing their products. Simple and effective.
 
Abercrombieboy said:
I am curious why there are any positive votes for this. Why would anyone rate this as a positive?:confused:
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Look, publishers and authors can't economically survive on Amazon's below-cost pricing forever. It's just not sustainable. If electronic publishing is going to succeed, there has to be a price point where profit can be made. It's not ideal, but it's realistic. If Apple paves the way for saving the printed word in this era of short attention spans and ever-expanding forms of entertainment, great!

It's not necessarily all about the individual consumer and his or her price preferences. Which would be free, you cheap SOB's! (kidding, sorta)
 
Wow I can't wait for this to blow up in their faces

The pricing of ebooks is so silly... I guess its the same reason people buy hardback books. That have to have it "now". Such a waste of money, and now thanks to Apple DRM you won't even have the ability to regift that book to a friend when you're done.

I seriously think the market ( and Apple ) have really deluded themselves into thinking that sales are just going to take off for e-books and other e-print at these prices.

Apple is lucky that the iPad happens not be a one trick pony, and can survive other ways.

Don't get me wrong, I would love this to be the future of e-reading, but a year from now, I think we'll be seeing headlines like "iPad a success, but e-publishers are struggling to deal with slow sales"
 
Wtf??

shocked-thumb.jpg
 
kas23 said:
This really means nothing. If Walmart is selling a product for $9 and Target is selling the exact same product for $12, would you cry and throw a temper tantrum? My point; just go to Amazon and buy the same friggin file for $3 cheaper. There's no need to swing from Steve's nutsack for everything.
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Especially true given that there is a free Kindle app for iPhone and the Mac!

sishaw said:
Look, publishers and authors can't economically survive on Amazon's below-cost pricing forever.
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Amazon was taking a loss on sales like that, not the book companies. I believe Amazon was trying to ramp up market share before other players got serious about it.
 
At least they are not charging the same for digital as they are for physical.... like the movie studios.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)

If I can get it cheaper from someone else (on the iPad) I will. Either way, i'd like to consolidate my collection into e format. I'm looking at my stack of CDs , and it feels like it's taking up too much space. I have no more room for books.
 
This is OK.

Authors and publishers have to live, too, and if they can't make money the quality of books will take a hit.

Well done, Apple.
 
cmfilms said:
Big deal. Have you ever tracked prices at Amazon? They fluctuate hourly.

And this is a store that isn't even open for another week? Relax.

Remember we were talking about paying $1000 for the iPad. :rolleyes:
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If anyone is interested in how often these Amazon prices DO fluctuate (cmfilms is correct--they fluctuate a lot!!), take a look at:

http://www.camelcamelcamel.com/

CamelCamelCamel has become one of my very favorite sites on the web this year. I've used it to track the prices of many books, and I've bought a few when they fluctuated below the price threshold that I specified. This is an amazing site!

It will be interesting to see how Apple's prices fluctuate too. This is a fascinating topic!
 
Buy a Kindle, you'll have x3 books to choose from, and most for less than $9.99...

You will also save your sight as you are reading from e-ink not a LED glossy (I mean, wtf... a glossy... say goodbye to your sight).
 
This is so dumb.

They used 9.99 as placeholder number while building things out.

Then the leak came out and they went to change things so people did not get the wrong idea.

I know this forum exists to soak up this rumors and news releases, but seriously.. the whole issue with pricing and why Apple was able to sign so many publishers was to give them control of their pricing, and none of them liked amazon at 9.99.

When they filled out hte dummy data for testing, I am sure someone just put a dummy number in there. If they had put 99.99 or .99 would people have thought bucks were going to be $100 each or 99 cents each?
 
CaptainCannabis said:
Buy a Kindle, you'll have x3 books to choose from, and most for less than $9.99...

You will also save your sight as you are reading from e-ink not a LED glossy (I mean, wtf... a glossy... say goodbye to your sight).
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If you're indoors you're much better off with the iPad's LED display than with an e-ink display.
 
firewired said:
Nice that Amazon and B&N will also have iPad apps, that way you can go from store to buy the identical book at the cheapest price and let the free market do the speaking.
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Nice that Many publishers have already pushed Amazon into letting them price their book sand probably same with B&N so books will likely be priced the same at all 3 places.
 
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