The Latest Good E-Reader News has Barnes and Noble, Sony and Amazon targeting the publishing sphere for lower costs of E-Books to be determined by the publishers themselves in the hopes to stave off fierce competition from the Apple iPad and the growing number of indy bookstores such as Kobo.
This new agreement will provide major publishers control over pricing for E-Books. According to a leading industry insider, Amazon will abandon its entry level fee for popular bestsellers and new releases from $9.99 to a price to be determined by publishers such as Simon and Schuster and HarperCollins.
Meanwhile, Barnes & Noble’s has already adapted this policy and it has already taken effect. Sony said yesterday that several major publishers will set the price of most e-books at US$12.99 to US$14.99, a shift from retailers deciding the pricing.
Barnes and Noble, Amazon and Sony dominate the mainstream market for e-book purchases, since Sony and Amazon dominate the current e-reader sphere. With the fluctuation of e-book prices, it will be interesting to see if books will increase in value for new releases or go down in value.
An Anonymous publishing contact as basicall confirmed that publishers are gravitating towards the the “agency” model for e-books — where the publisher is the seller such as Barnes and Noble, Sony and Amazon is the “agent” If there are specific taxes to be levied in the USA or now Canada it is up to Amazon to collect these.
We are seeing the publishing companies throwing more weight behind the lucrative e-book market that is seeing record profits being raised and competition from Apple is stimulating competitive advantages of lowering e-book costs.
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Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
