iPad Ad Features $8 to $15 E-Books

By Ed Sutherland (11:30 am, Mar. 08, 2010)

Along with a glimpse of Apple CEO Steve Jobs attending Sunday’s Oscars, viewers may also have seen the first public shots fired in the ebook pricing wars between the Cupertino, Calif. company and online retail goliath Amazon. The 30-second commercial included several best-sellers appearing on the iPad’s iBookstore and at prices spanning $7.99 to $14.99.

Sen. Edward Kennedy’s “True Compass: A Memoir” had a $14.99 iBookstore price, lower than the $19.25 Amazon charges Kindle e-book readers. However, both the $12.99 price for the iBookstore version of James Patterson’s “I, Alex Cross” and $7.99 iBookstore version of “Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Journey to Change the World…One Child at a Time” by Greg Mortensen and David Oliver Relin were higher than Amazon: $9.99 and $7.19, respectively.

Booksellers have used Apple’s iPad and iBook application as a wedge to force Amazon to change its required $9.99 pricing for Kindle e-books. Publishers were concerned that the artificially low prices would prompt consumers to rethink paying $24 for a printed version of the same title.

Reports last week suggested Apple may already have a lead in terms of consumer mind-share on an e-book platform. Apple could have 40 percent of the e-reader market 90 days after the iPad is released, with the Kindle owning 25 percent of the market, according to Changewave Research.

[via AppleInsider, 9to5 Mac and MacRumors]

Posted by Ed Sutherland in News | Comment on this article

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Ed Sutherland

Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.

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5 comments

    Considering that there’s a Kindle app for iPhone that should work on the iPad also, why wouldn’t consumers just buy their books on whichever store is cheaper? This might work out ok after all.

    -JR

    JR, on March 8th, 2010 at 1:04 pm

    Already wrote about variable iPad ebook prices on Feb 4:
    http://obamapacman.com/2010/02/apple-ipad-ibookstore-ebook-prices-high-price-myth/

    ObamaPacman, on March 8th, 2010 at 1:22 pm

    Like JR said. I’ve already found myself doing that with Kindle and eReader on iPhone, checking who has the better pricing or selection. I think competition can only be good for the consumer, who finally has some real alternative to the Kindle model I hate. While ebooks will have DRM, at least if you buy something from iTunes, it’s yours even if Apple becomes unhappy with you for other reasons. If you make Amazon unhappy (as in returning merchandise one too many times), they can lock out access to your entire Kindle library.

    Mezzrow, on March 8th, 2010 at 2:33 pm

    I swore durring the keynote I saw a section on the ibook store that said free like the itunes store has a free section which would make sense because in the Us all books written before a certain date are public domain. Not sure about copywrite law elsewhere but doesn’t the itunes store change based on where you are so wouldn’t this store change too to adhere to copywrite law?

    Greg, on March 8th, 2010 at 6:39 pm

    Pwned http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1057980&l=7bfc6db30e&id=1409404584 there’s the proof!!

    Greg, on March 18th, 2010 at 11:26 pm

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