There are also easy to find methods for the average avid reader who is not particularly computer savvy to disguise their place of origin. Needless to say, I’m sure the pirates know them.

All this handicapping of expats does is drive us to pirate versions. I’ve given up buying legitimate DVDs because I’m too sick of having a DVD not play because of region encoding.

I’m pretty sure for me it will come down to the price of books. I don’t anticipate hard covers disappearing, but I can see them being more a collectors item.

I just discovered Pandora Radio. What a great site.

Personally, I think the Apple/Amazon/Wal-Mart battle will eventually turn out good for customers. In general, competition usually benefits consumers, and I can’t imagine that this will be any different. I’ve said this before and I still believe it, in less than five years hardbacks are going to cease to exist and thus the crux of the problem will go away anyway. There will special edition/collector’s editions, but for the most part, popular fiction will come in ebooks and paperbacks.

Simon & Schuster used to be good about ebooks at a discount. They used to be the cheapest place to buy S&S titles from most times

YES! I remember this. I used to buy from them all the time but since they started increasing the price, I’ve stopped buying from them. If worst comes to worst where ebook prices start to go up, I’ll just quit buying books and force myself to read the hundreds upon hundreds of books that I already own and oh, shop at the used bookstore if I must have a print title.

d. knowing Amazon, if the publishers started selling ebooks at 40% off through their sites, Amazon would start selling the Kindle edition at 50% off, and people would end up buying from Amazon anyway (unless the publishers sold DRM-free editions, which as you noted, they’re leery of doing)

My dream would be for all publishers to follow Baen’s model, especially when it comes to DRM and multiple formats. Samhain’s done it, more or less, with MBaM and so now I only buy their titles directly from them.

If publishers released their books at 40% off on their website, it would undercut Amazon and move more readers to buying direct. Publishers don't want to do this because a) they don't want to engage in discounting of their product and b) because to truly make this successful, the books would have to be DRM free.

Absolutely! I would happily buy books I could read on my kindle directly from publishers if they would be willing to cut out the middle man and discount them directly on their own site. But right now, Amazon is cheapest and easiest.

That’s my problem with the iPad. I don’t mind it for the iTouch because it’s cheaper and smaller and I don’t expect to use it for anything I couldn’t find an app for. If I bought an iPad, it’d have to replace a netbook because of the price point, and I doubt the app store would be sufficient. I’ll be watching to see what actual customers/users think of it.

Whatever Shipley says, one of the people who went to work for Apple in 2005 was Mike Mattas, co-founder of Delicious.
Mattas was the person who “graphically orchestrated” the Deliciouse Library program. Shipley wrote it. So I think that Mattas has just as much right, if not more, to use the look of the Delicious Library

Link shows article about the hiring of Mattas

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/05/07/21/delicious_monster_co_founder_joins_apple_interface_team.html

But what they’re doing now is really a 180 degree move away from what they have historically been, in terms of software. Apple has traditionally been about using software to sell the hardware, and as a result we have all these great programs developed by brilliant individuals using Cocoa, etc. With the app store, Apple figured out how to monetize software for the iPhone/iPod, and now they’re extending the model to the iPad.

An example of what this means: years ago, I bought WriteRoom from the wonderful Jesse at HogBay Software for 24.95. Fantastic program, and he got all the money. WriteRoom on the iPhone is 4.99, of which Apple takes 30%. Maybe that’s a price he would have set anyway, but now it’s not his choice; he has to fit it within the existing App Store environment. Plus he has to pay $99/year to be an App store developer. So we go from him getting 100% of the selling price to 70% of a lower price, minus the yearly fee. Frankly, I’d rather pay more money to an individual (who always answers his email from customers) than less money to Apple (which reserves the right to screen everything it puts up based on any number of criteria that I don’t agree with).

And with the iPad, you are tied to the App store. No surfing the web to find shiny new programs.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Apple products. I’m typing this comment on a hackintoshed HP Mini. But I don’t like the direction they are going.

It may not be Microsoft of the ’90s yet, but it’s not the old Apple, either.

ETA: And there was no way, given the App Store exclusivity, that we’d have ebooks without DRM. Apple wants to own its customers as much as Amazon/Kindle does. I just wonder what it means for Stanza and ereader. I assume they’ll stay on the iPhone, but will Apple let them into the iPad app store?

Now movies on line: they are a CAPTIVE audience!

I was hoping that Apple would do the same for the ebook industry. But it looks like in this case, Apple is bending over for publishers to keep their ebook pricing at outrageous prices. On top of that, yet another DRM format? Ugh.

I agree with first poster- Apple is becoming the new Microsoft.

As I understand it, Amazon pays the same wholesale price for Kindle books as it does for real books-’generally 50 percent of the list price. For a typical hardback that retails for $26-’say, E.L. Doctorow’s Homer & Langley-’Amazon pays $13 and then sells it for $9.99 on the Kindle, taking a $3 loss on each sale. (The longer-term strategy, publishers fear, is that once the Kindle gains significant market share, Amazon will negotiate lower wholesale prices for digital versions.) In the short term, though, this means that Amazon is likely to lose more money on more expensive books sold on the Kindle. It would have to pay $17.50 per “copy” of the digital version of True Compass, and $14.50 per copy for Going Rogue, but would sell them for significantly less. I

Just as Amazon can’t unilaterally renegotiate their contracts, publishers can’t force Amazon to sell the books at the price they want. I have interpreted Amazon’s strong-arming tactics (as they are described) as refusing to go along with publishers’ expectations that books wouldn’t be priced below the standard discounts that had evolved in the print market.

It can’t be about the effective price of the book, either, because there hasn’t been much evidence of publisher uproar over Fictionwise’s 100% micropay rebates, which reduce the cost to the buyer to 0 (excluding the cost incurred when the buyer gets credit rather than the actual money back). It really does seem to be that the Kindle 9.99 price is not only lower than the discounted prices, but it’s a permanent (for now) price across all hardcovers.

It’s not a matter of agreeing with your analogy. It’s that your facts are wrong. Amazon has contracts with publishers. The contracts allow them to buy a book at list price less some discount. Unless that contract is renegotiated, Amazon cannot change the terms unilaterally.

Amazon’s loss leader works exactly the same as Wal-marts. Come for the $9.99 books and buy the other ones at a price that earn a profit for Amazon.

I have just had an email exchange with someone from a major publishing house who confirms this.

Walmart (and other mass marketers) chose to enter into to a price war with Amazon (and each other), resulting in their discounting hardbacks to as low as $8.99. This price was well below what was agreed upon between the WalMart and the publsihers. But the contracts already spelled out what the publishers had to be paid for sales, so the additional loss was eaten by Walmart. This is pretty much how a loss leader works.

This is NOT what is happening with Amazon. Amazon has created their own artificial price for eBooks and are insisting that publishers go along with it. This price appears to me to be designed as a loss leader. Its purpose is certainly the same. At WalMart, loss leaders get you in the door and they make up the loss because you buy other stuff too. At Amazon they make it up by getting you to buy the Kindle (which then locks you in to their book buying system as a bonus). Amazon is not eating the loss on this artificially mandated price however, they are insisting the publishers accept it as the “true” price and that their cut of the sale be based upon it.

You are free to disagree with my analogy, but I think my logic is perfectly clear and sound.