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Warner Bros. intros 'Inside the Script' eBook series, gives film buffs a deeper look
From time to time, we see movie studio Warner Bros. bring forth ways to give its oldies-but-goodies a longer life span. On this occasion, Warner's launching a novel eBook series titled "Inside the Script." The new release will give movie buffs a deeper look into a handful of the studio's films, which will include tidbits such as complete shooting scripts, deets about the flick's development and other "rare" goods. At launch, Warner will offer classics like Casablanca, Ben-Hur, An American in Paris and North by Northwest -- all available now on iBooks, Kindle and B&N's NOOK for $10 each. Those eager to flip through the antique pages can head to the source below, where you'll be able to grab the version best suited for your device.
Ex-WSJ publisher: Apple's 30% profit sharing ebook agency model is not a conspiracy
As Apple prepares to go to trial to fight the US Department of Justice's claims that the Cupertino company conspired to fix ebook prices with publishers, former publisher of the Wall Street Journal L. Gordon Crovitz has an interesting oped in today's paper which he says that Apple's 30% profit sharing "agency model" with ebook publishers does not amount to the price fixing conspiracy that the DOJ accuses the company of. It is Crovitz's contention (as I assume Apple will also argue the same in court) that the government's assertion that the agency model is "inherently wrong" is false. The agency model means publishers, rather than resellers, set the prices of ebooks. Matter of fact, Crovitz says that Apple's agency model is not only good for Apple, but good for consumers and publishers as well, insisting that instead of conspiring to fix prices, they conspired to fix a broken ebook system in which Amazon controlled almost everything: Publishers conspired to repair an anticompetitive business model. They thought it made no sense for Amazon's Kindle to have a 90% market share and a single loss-leader price of $9.95 for consumers. They were right. Over the past couple of years, thanks to the agency model, the Kindle's market share has fallen to 60% thanks to competition from iPads and Barnes & Noble Nooks, and there is more variation in consumer prices, typically ranging from $5.95 to $14.95. Of noted interested is when Crovitz relates how he met with Apple's Eddy Cue to discuss the terms of revenue sharing for published works. Expecting a better deal than the 30% take Apple generates from apps Crovitz was a bit surprised when Cue told him, "'I don't think you understand. We can't treat newspapers or magazines any differently than we treat FarmVille." As Crovitz states: "It was a sobering reminder that traditional media brands have no preferred place in the new digital world."
Apple officially responds to DOJ's antitrust case
Apple has officially responded to the antitrust claim brought against the company by the US Department of Justice. In the claim the DOJ says that Apple worked with five major publishers to illegally fix eBook pricing. In response to the lawsuit Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr told AllThingsD: The DOJ's accusation of collusion against Apple is simply not true. The launch of the iBookstore in 2010 fostered innovation and competition, breaking Amazon's monopolistic grip on the publishing industry. Since then customers have benefited from eBooks that are more interactive and engaging. Just as we've allowed developers to set prices on the App Store, publishers set prices on the iBookstore. Three of the five major publishers -- Hachette, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster -- have already settled with the DOJ. However, Penguin Group and MacMillan have vowed to fight the suit along with Apple. However, leading antitrust experts say that the DOJ has a "far better case" for price fixing among the publishers than they do against Apple. One reason is that Apple was allegedly not present at meetings with the five publisher when they decided to fix eBook pricing. Another reason: it's hard to bring an antitrust case against a company who only controls 10% of the eBook market through its iBookstore. Amazon, on the other hand, has a 90% share of the eBook market.
Reuters: Justice Department ready to sue Apple over ebook price fixing (Updated)
A report from Reuters suggests the Department of Justice could file a lawsuit against Apple today over alleged ebook price fixing. Publishers involved in the price-fixing scheme are supposedly settling with the government, while Apple has stayed out of the negotiations. As a result, Apple could face legal action by the government as early as Wednesday. Reuters reached out to Apple and the company declined to comment. Update: The Justice Department released its official statement on Wednesday afternoon. The DOJ confirmed it filed an antitrust lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against Apple and five book publishers including Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Hachette, Penguin Group (USA) and Macmillan. Hachette, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster agreed to a settlement for alleged ebook pricing fixing, while Apple, MacMillan and Penguin Group are fighting the charges in court. The settlement requires these publishers to let Amazon and other retailers lower the price of digital books. It also ends "their anticompetitive most-favored-nation agreements" with Apple and other ebook sellers.
Dear Aunt TUAW: Help me get user guides for iBooks
Dear Aunt TUAW, While it is possible to track down Apple user manual .pdf files on their support site and then import them to iBooks, why doesn't Apple simply make them available for free in a special section of the iBooks app? Your loving nephew, Jeremy Dear Jeremy, They do. Just search for Apple in the iBookstore. For example: iPhone User Guide iPod touch User Guide iPad User Guide Hugs, Auntie T.
Department of Justice reportedly planning antitrust suit against Apple
According to a Wall Street Journal Report, the Department of Justice is threatening to sue Apple and five book publishers for artificially inflating the price of ebooks. The five book publishers include Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, Pearson PLC's Penguin Group, Macmillan and HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. The investigation centers on Apple's agency model pricing for ebooks in the iBookstore. Instead of a wholesale model that Amazon was using, Apple pushed for an agency model which let publishers set book prices and Apple would take a 30 percent cut. Amazon, however, was using a wholesale model which let them sell books for $10 or less. This pricing model was upsetting to publishers who were concerned customers would get used to the low prices. Publishers used Apple's agency model agreement to strongarm Amazon into adopting the same pricing model and it agreed. As a result, ebook prices on Amazon's Kindle store increased.
iBookstore adds screenshots, promo codes, and more for publishers
iTunes Connect has sent out a letter to content publishers detailing some changes and improvements to the iBookstore. Just like the App Store, the iBookstore now allows publishers to issue promo codes for content sold on the store -- up to 50 free codes distributable to book reviewers. Publishers can also submit screenshots of the book, which will be particularly useful for multimedia content produced via iBooks Author. Just like screenshots for the App Store, Apple is very specific on what formats it will accept: 1024 x 768 or 768 x 1024 pictures in the RGB color space, formatted as .jpeg, .jpg, or .png. The iBookstore has altered the way it handles pre-orders for content. Now publishers are able to make content available for pre-order without submitting a book cover or any other assets until up to two weeks prior to publication. Covers, book assets, and custom previews must be submitted two weeks prior to publication. The addition of promo codes and screenshots brings iBookstore content more in line with the offerings on the App Store and will no doubt be extremely useful tools to publishers of all sizes, from the biggest publishing houses down to budding self-publishers.
Official Mario and Zelda songbooks now available in English
The musician/gamer hybrid isn't as rare as one might think; spending five minutes on YouTube searching for "piano covers" is proof enough that the musically inclined among us are continuing to explore their passion for video games in creative and expressive ways. One of the major hurdles facing musical gamers (or gamicians, if you will) is the difficulty inherent in finding official sheet music or tabulature for video-game soundtracks. Songbooks are often expensive and in Japanese -- if they even exist in the first place. Now though, the hunt for gaming sheet music has just gotten a little easier.Four officially licensed Nintendo-oriented songbooks are now available in The Queen's English from Alfred Music Publishing. The books, Super Mario for Guitar, Super Mario for Piano, Super Mario for Easy Piano and The Legend of Zelda for Piano each contain more than 30 songs from various games in their respective series. What's more, Super Mario for Piano and The Legend of Zelda for Piano are also available in ebook format on Apple's iBookstore.Each book retails for between $16.99 and $19.99, and while Mario and Zelda aren't exactly obscure, there's something to be said for learning the classics. Let's hope this is the beginning of a new trend in localizing gaming sheet music; we'd give up an arm for a Mega Man 3 songbook. No, wait, we'd give up a leg. We need that arm to play music.
Why McGraw-Hill is selling iBooks for $15
The announcement this morning that textbooks would be sold through the iBookstore wasn't especially surprising. But the price was; full-featured multimedia electronic textbooks being offered for no more than US$15 is exactly the kind of disruptive shakeup the industry needed. While only the K-12 education market is on board so far, I'm looking forward to a future where universities sign up too, and students' book costs drop from the nearly $1000 dollars a year I paid as an undergrad to much more reasonable and manageable levels. One question on many people's minds has been how Apple and the textbook publishers were able to agree on such a low pricing scheme for textbooks. After all, high school textbooks usually cost $75 each, and thus far publishers haven't been well-known for offering electronic versions of published works at a discount; in fact, in a lot of cases ebooks have cost more than their paper versions despite presumably lower distribution and production costs. So, not that anyone's complaining, why the lower prices? AllThingsD asked that question of McGraw-Hill CEO Terry McGraw, and it turns out to have a simple answer. Schools will usually hold onto the paper versions of textbooks for about five years, meaning the publishers are only recouping about $15 per year anyway. Via the iBookstore, textbooks can be sold directly to students (who may or may not be offered payment vouchers from their schools), and from the publishers' perspective, the beauty of this arrangement is that those books can't be re-used or re-sold. After Apple takes its 30 percent cut, publishers will only take $10.50 from a $15 textbook sale, but that's $10.50 they can get from every student, every year, and without the heavy production and distribution costs associated with making and shipping the often giant-sized paper versions of textbooks. It's obviously too early to tell whether this will work out to be a lucrative arrangement for textbook publishers, but just looking at the way the numbers shake out, at the very least it seems that, contrary to initial appearances, $15 isn't such a shockingly low price for textbooks after all.
iBooks Author accounts are free, existing developers need a new account
Setting up an account to publish books to the iBookstore has always been free, and the new iBooks Author tool has brought that fact into the spotlight. Self-publishing books to the iBookstore does still have a few hurdles you have to leap through, however. As AppleInsider points out, for iOS and Mac developers in particular, one hurdle is that existing iTunes Connect App Store accounts won't allow you to upload books to the iBookstore; instead, you'll need to set up a separate Apple ID associated with iBooks Author. Account setup also requires you to input credit card information and have a US-based tax ID -- for individuals self-publishing content, a Social Security number will suffice. For some odd reason, iBooks also require an ISBN (a requirement the Kindle Store doesn't have), and those aren't cheap. In the US, purchasing a single ISBN from Bowker costs $125, or you can buy them in discounted packs. Personally, I have no idea why they're allowed to get away with those prices; ISBNs in my country are available for free. Speaking from personal experience, setting up a publisher account on the iBookstore is a lengthy and somewhat unintuitive process -- but nowhere near as slow and frustrating as dealing with traditional publishers. Developers not being able to use an existing iTunes Connect account to publish iBookstore content is a bit baffling, however, and hopefully it's something Apple will address.
How Apple iBooks needs to compete with Amazon: KDP Select
Amazon has trailblazed; Apple has followed. Apple's iBooks program currently allows authors to self-publish ebooks. Authors create their own business built around iTunes Connect, just as they do for self-published apps. So where does Apple have room to improve? What follows is the first of several posts about how iBooks can improve to better compete with Amazon. In this post, I discuss Amazon's exclusive KDP Select program and what Apple can do in response. KDP Select When Amazon launched its recent KDP Select program, the independent publish world reacted strongly and negatively. KDP Select is built around exclusive Amazon listings, requiring authors to withdraw their titles from competing vendors like Apple's iBooks, Smashwords, and Lulu. If you want to participate in Select, you cannot sell your book in any form with any other vendor. You must enroll books for a minimum of 90 days. During this time, Select allows authors to loan their books for, well, free -- and promote their books by giving them away, again, for free. Sounds bad, right? As a lure, Amazon has promised a shared pot of $500K per month for December 2011 and monthly through 2012, with a total commitment of six million dollars. (The first month is over and Amazon has not yet announced per-borrow reward amounts; most involved are guessing in the range of cents-per-borrow.) What's more, it's a zero sum game: the more authors who play in the arena, the fewer dollars there are for each. Sounds bad, but is it a losing proposition for authors? Personal experience shows that for niche and underperforming titles, KDP Select is actually a great way to gain market traction. Target Market KDP Select with its unlimited free loans and exclusivity requirements is clearly not a game that any well-established book wants to play in. "Talking to Siri: Learning the Language of Apple's Intelligent Assistant" is an ebook by TUAW editor Steve Sande and myself that has been selling quite well on both Amazon and iBooks. It will soon debut as a print book with Addison Wesley/Que. We declined to enroll it in KDP Select. We could not see any advantage from withdrawing it from iBooks or offering it as a free loan book. Instead, we focused on a couple of our highly geeky Kindle Fire-specific titles. These titles cover Email and Third Party Content. In response to Amazon, we withdrew these from iBooks, added them to the KDP Select program and have seen surprisingly good results. That's because KDP Select trades off promotion for free copies. I personally used one of my five KDP promotion free days on Christmas for my Kindle Fire Third Party Content ebook. Mind you, this is a small very narrowly-focused ebook that shows readers how to incorporate content outside of the Amazon system on your tablet. In other words, it's never going to be a general best seller. That day, my sales numbers jumped from modest into the high triple digits. I made no money of course, as each copy was given away for free, but the book's momentum carried it forward to very gratifying sales for the week that followed. In exchange for cultivating a cadre of exclusive-to-Amazon titles, their program is helping authors promote for very low fixed costs on Amazon's part. Amazon's Outlay Amazon has commited to $500,000 per month to share among KDP Select authors. This money is apportioned by loan popularity. A hot fiction title climbing the Amazon charts will do a lot better than a niche geek nonfiction title. One loan is one vote. Authors must compete against each other to gain a portion of the half-million pot of dollars. In addition to this basic fixed-outlay scheme, Amazon has some basic infrastructure costs with regard to loan management and title promotion. Apple's Response To date, Apple has not focused highly on independent authors. This is a shame as more and more self-published works are emerging outside the bounds of traditional publishing. As I'll explain in my next post, to publish on iBooks, you'll need a properly formatted and validated ePub file and a costly registered ISBN (International Standard Book Number). On Amazon, all you need is passion and a Microsoft Word doc file. Add KDP Select to the mix and many potential iBooks titles will never make it to the Apple bookshelf. They'll be limited exclusively to Amazon. Amazon's pre-emptive raid into the independent publisher's world is cutting off titles, both present and future, from iBooks, and other platforms. If Apple hopes to lure these authors to its store, it's going to have to react, and react strongly. Something has to draw them away from Amazon and from KDP Select. Apple needs to provide these authors with a reason to stay away from exclusive Amazon listings, and potentially to list exclusively with Apple. Right now, it does so by offering better terms than Amazon. With Apple, authors receive a full 70% of list price with no delivery fees, the bane of Amazon sales. On Amazon, delivery fees that are linked to file size can cut a chunk of profit out of any book listed for $2.99 or higher. (Items listed at 30% royalty rates, or sold for under $2.99 are exempted from delivery fees.) The problem is that, at least in our experience, Amazon sells better than iBooks, particularly for smaller titles. Items are more discoverable on Amazon and Apple does little to promote independents. If Apple were to provide some way for smaller authors to market more discoverably on the iBooks store, they could grow that indie community. Apple also needs to provide more and better author peer support. Authors, who regularly congregate on Amazon's forums, find little equivalent on Apple's sites. Apple could also hire iBooks evangelists, in parallel to their World Wide Developer Relations, to teach potential authors about iBook authoring tools, how to use iTunes Connect, and provide book publishing road shows -- but more about that in my next post. Will Apple offer its own exclusive agreements in response to KDP Select, as recent unsourced rumors seem to suggest? TUAW doesn't find these rumors credible, but if Apple does, it better make sure to provide the marketing push that's the true draw of the Select program. Posts in this series: KDP Select Better Author Tools Cross Platform Support
Apple gearing up for 'media-related announcement' later this month?
Leave it to Apple to completely avoid CES, yet be one of the largest stories surrounding its dates. Much like last year's invite to what would eventually be the introduction of Verizon's iPhone 4, All Things D has it on good authority that the folks in Cupertino are spending their first hours back on the job planning a "media-related announcement" for later this month. Contrary to earlier beliefs, we're told by All Things D that this particular event won't be related to the next-gen iPad, and it's also "unlikely" to be connected to a "large-scale rethinking of its interactive television initiative." So, knowing what it won't entail... what will be talked about? According to unnamed sources, Apple SVP of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue is reportedly involved. For those unaware, Cue is responsible for a sizable chunk of Apple's media units, not the least of which include the App Store, iBookstore, iTunes Store and iCloud. Sadly, details outside of that are few and far betwixt, but you can bet we'll be keeping an ear to the ground for more -- even if it's smack-dab in the middle of a Sony CES keynote. Cough. Update: TechCrunch is reporting that it'll focus on the publishing sector, with no new hardware whatsoever on tap. Update 2: Clayton Morris has chimed in and confirmed that it'll be related to iTunes.
U.S. Department of Justice joins Apple ebook pricing investigation
Just a couple days after European antitrust regulators launched an investigation into allegations of ebook price fixing among Apple and several major book publishers, the US Department of Justice is now joining the fray. Computerworld reports that DOJ acting antitrust chief Sharis Pozen is "investigating ebook industry practices." While Pozen provided no additional information and didn't specifically name Apple, the pattern so far has been decidedly unfavorable to Apple and its iBookstore. A class action lawsuit alleging price fixing was filed in August, the European Commission has launched antitrust probes, and two US state Attorneys General have already begun their own investigations targeting Apple's ebook pricing. The class action suit has alleged that Apple and several major book publishers have conspired to drive up ebook prices in order to prevent Amazon from underselling the iBookstore.
iBookstore promo codes a no-show for e-publishers
iBooks publishers looking to send ebooks to reviewers, or who want to stir up interest in a new title through a giveaway contest, are out of luck. Unlike the App Store, publishers cannot create promo codes for the iBookstore. For iOS developers marketing their latest products, promo codes provide a critical tool. Generated by iTunes Connect, the developer's portal to the App Store, promo codes allow developers to give courtesy copies of apps to reviewers or use them for promotional giveaways. That can be a bit of an issue for publishers. The Amazon Kindle Bookstore, which also lacks a way to generate promo codes, at least makes it possible to buy Amazon gift cards in any denomination. This allows publishers to offset ebook costs for their recipients. With the iBookstore, the story is quite different. Erica Sadun and I recently ran a Twitter contest for our new Siri book. We were dismayed to discover that to give away our iBook priced at $4.99, we had one choice -- purchase a $15 (the minimum) iTunes card and gift it to the recipient. That's not bad for a few copies here and there. But it could be disastrous to any small, first-time publisher trying to get a book noticed by reviewers. Will Apple change this in the future? Chances are good that eventually there will be promo codes for the iBookstore. At the present time, the lack of promo codes could be yet another reason why the iBookstore is lagging behind the Amazon Kindle Bookstore both in terms of numbers of titles and in sales.
Steve Jobs biography released early for Kindle, iBookstore (updated)
Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs has been released a couple hours early on the Kindle Store, and its release in the US iBookstore is expected at midnight. The US iBookstore is still showing the book as available for pre-order as of this writing, but it should be available for download within the next couple of hours. Multiple details of the biography have leaked out over the past week via multiple media outlets, and a 60 Minutes interview with Walter Isaacson provided some fascinating insights into both the biography itself and the man who was its subject. Along with many other members of the Apple-loving world, I am very much looking forward to reading it, and I will have a review of the work up on TUAW as soon as I've finished reading it. Look for that review later on in the week -- with a print length of 656 pages, it might take me a day or two to read through the whole book. Thanks to the readers who tipped us! Update: The biography went live on the iBookstore an hour earlier than expected, so it's now available.
Swiss iBookstore starts selling books
Our readers in Switzerland will be happy to hear that Apple has finally begun selling books in the Swiss iBookstore. Up until today, Apple has only had free Project Gutenberg books available for download. MacPrime.ch notes that currently there are a few hundred paid books on the Swiss iBookstore, including 71 works by Stephen King, some Dan Brown titles, and the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson (pre-order only). Books cost between 4 and 24 Swiss Francs, with most titles costing 7, 15, or 24 Francs. [Thanks, Steve]
Apple tweets from the iBookstore
Back in January Apple created an official Twitter account for its App Store. @AppStore allows users who follow it to get the latest on App Store news and deals. 745 tweets later, Apple has decided to open up another Twitter account. @iBookstore offers followers "official updates from the U.S. iBookstore from Apple, including featured books, exclusive offers, and more." The account went live this afternoon and currently has three tweets and a little over 2000 followers. Besides the @AppStore and @iBookstore accounts, Apple owns six other Twitter accounts: @itunesfestival, @iTunesTrailers, @iTunesPodcasts, @iTunesTV, @iTunesMovies, and @iTunesMusic.
Apple adds Quick Reads section to iBookstore, promotes short e-books
Apple has added a new "Quick Reads" section to the iBookstore, promoting short, inexpensive titles. The collection includes everything from manuals to short stories, each selling for US$5 or less. Amazon has featured short (typically 5,000 words or so), inexpensive titles as "Kindle Singles" for some time at approximately the same price point. It's unclear if Apple's Quick Reads are a direct response to Amazon's efforts, for if it's experimenting with brief, low-cost titles. If you've got an iPad and an inclination towards a book you can finish in a sitting, you might find one to suit your fancy there.
Ronald Wayne's autobiography now in the iBookstore
Apple co-founder Ronald Wayne's autobiography Adventures of an Apple Founder is now available in the iBookstore. Who is Ronald Wayne? Many Apple fans know the story of a young Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, busily working in the Jobs family garage in the 1970s. That effort would lead to the Apple we know today, with each man being credited as Apple co-founder. There was a third party, too, whose name is less synonymous with Apple. Ronald Wayne was the young company's "adult supervision," and drew the very first logo and wrote the manual for the Apple I. Plus, he drew up the original partnership agreement between Jobs and Woz. I'm sure those stories and more are in Adventures of an Apple Founder. He left the company a short time later, and he explains why he does not regret the decision in the book. Those interested in Apple's history will want to pick it up. While you're at it, why not buy iWoz and Steve Jobs for the trifecta?
Apple involved in class-action lawsuit over ebook pricing
On today's episode of The Daily Lawsuit: law firm Hagens Berman has filed a class action lawsuit against Apple and five of the major book publishing houses. The suit claims Apple and these publishers have conspired to raise prices on ebooks. According to the suit, Amazon's loss-leading pricing for ebooks, designed to drive sales of its Kindle e-reader device, may have led to consumers having an established expectation of low ebook pricing. Allegedly, Apple and the major publishers named in the suit have colluded to raise ebook prices significantly over Amazon's lower prices under the so-called agency model. Under the agency model, ebooks are sold directly to consumers (rather than being sold to retailers as under the old model), with retailers splitting revenues from sales. In the case of Apple's iBookstore, Apple's cut is the same as for most of its other online services: 30 percent. The suit alleges that Apple's pushing of the agency model has meant that competitors like Amazon are now unable to price ebooks lower than Apple's set prices, which has resulted in driving the price of ebooks higher than ever before -- in some cases, electronic media is more expensive than traditional printed copies. We've looked at iBookstore pricing before, but the situation in 2010 didn't seem to reflect what's described in this suit. The price of ebooks certainly isn't higher than the cost of printed copies in many non-US countries, either; in New Zealand, I could buy three ebooks off the US iBookstore for the cost of one trade paperback from a brick-and-mortar retailer. That pricing situation is the same or worse in the UK and Australia. According to Hagens Berman, "The lawsuit seeks damages for the purchase of e-books, an injunction against pricing e-books with the agency model and forfeiture of the illegal profits received by the defendants as a result of their anticompetitive conduct, which could total tens of millions of dollars." Well, good luck with that; from what we've been seeing so far, the iBookstore hasn't exactly been a smashing success.
