IPad vs. Kindle. Round 1.
Late Friday night my colleague Charles Pellegrino, author, "Last Train from Hiroshima: The Survivors Look Back," learned that his Macmillan published book (Scott MacRae Books) had been unilaterally removed from Amazon.com sales (that is, you cannot buy it in any format from Amazon at any price, but you can buy it from private dealers who use the Amazon site) as part of a bullying tactic by Amazon against all publishers over the IPad. The story changed again on Saturday, and I spoke to Charlie late Saturday on air, that Amazon is now threatening all publishers with the same preemptive action it has launched against Macmillan if they go through with the deal with Jobs and Apple over IPad pricing. It is a strange fight. Amazon sells digital downloads for the Kindle at $9.99. Apple has negotiated an agreement with publishers to sell the same download for the IPad at $12.99 or $13.99. Apple keeps 30%. Amazon is fighting this because it is more expensive competition? No, because the IPad is a better device than the Kindle, bigger with color and more tricks called apps. In sum, Amazon is in a dogfight with Apple and is shooting some of the authors in order to scare all of the authors and their publishers into obedience and surrender. Trade war, Jeff Bezos billionaire vs.Steve Jobs billionaire. Class action suits to follow. There will be virtual blood. Charlie did Coast to Coast two hours later on Saturday30/Sunday31 night, and the Coast team, led by Ian Punnett, eventually figured out what Charlie was telling them (what he had just told me and my audience on WABC) and they happily joined in the fight against Bezos. I see opportunity to engage the Apple House co-ops, too. Adam Smith says that the invisible hand (virtual hand) will out: to the cheaper goes the spoils. Soon there will be an Apple/Amazon detenete -- waiting on the Kindle upgrade to color. Also waiting on an Amazon/Jobs link up to be fought by Sony/Borders and so forth. And where is News Corp? Why off-load the 30% profit to Jobs? Digital is not owned. Digital publishing is the same as digital audio and video and news. In 1915, everyone with a big machine shop in Michigan and Wisconsin and Illinois and New York figured it was time to build cars and trucks. Can you buy the Packard Twin Six? But there are plenty of Ford Sixes.
The way I see it, the whole argument is moot. The iPad will flop (as Spindle has done). I heard a popular radio host here recently advise to hold up on buying the iPad because of its various deficiencies. For one thing, it was said, you cannot perform two or more tasks at the same time on iPad; another, it doesn’t have a camera.
All the jokes about the name itself, point to a bigger problem with the device. The trend is toward combining all things in one reasonably portable device. People do not want to have to go to different devices for different functions. Neither do I believe (and many, including JB, will disagree with me on this) that an electronic alternative to a book constitutes a lasting alternative. The recent shift to the internet for information at the expense of books, newspapers and magazines is not a function of the written word (on paper) having become obsolete. The reason for the shift is content and content alone.
The public is not stupid. Yes, price is a factor. Yet, it is well known that content trumps delivery; that simply putting ideology and spin out there in any form no longer cuts it, especially when it goes against the grain of common sense. That is why Newsweek got only 35 paid subscribers when they made their internet offering. That is why The New York Times and others are drowning in a sea of red ink. That is why neither the iPad nor the internet will save them.
http://peterkoelliker.blogspot.com/
Also then we have the small matter of just who will pay the writer in this information-wants-to-be-free era. As Mr. Batchelor knows better than most, the mid-list writer--that is, the reasonably successful author who makes a decent middle-class income--is on his way to extinction, like pandas and Pygmies. Who will actually write the words for all these wonderful new electronic gadgets?
Amazon folded quickly.
You can find some fascinating discussion of the ebooks/Kindel and pricing for publishers and authors at the following links.
http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090619/like-your-kindle-books-cheap-dont-get-too-used-to-it/
http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20100130/the-apple-amazon-book-war-heats-up-and-claims-macmillan-as-a-casualty/?mod=ATD_sphere
http://www.tbiresearch.com/e-readers-should-drive-profits-for-both-distributors-and-book-publishers-2009-11
http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-kindle-milestone-amazon-sold-more-ebooks-than-physical-books-on-xmas-2009-12
http://www.tbiresearch.com/amazon-likely-to-make-modest-profit-from-covey-deal-2009-12
Re: John's question on the Pellegrino book about whether we did the right thing by using nukes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Count my vote for YES, and count me among perhaps the few remaining who don't even think it should be questioned. We were at war, the purpose of war is to win, we won. As to carbonizing babies, well, it sounds like a pretty painless way to go. Dying in less than 1/100th of a second: when it's my time to go, where can I sign up for that? Especially when the question of whether we did the right thing can have no earthly purpose at this point to ask, it smacks more of faux sensitivity and faux liberalism. Damn straight, we'd do it again. Since when was the purpose of war to be kind to one's enemies?
"For what is it to die, but to stand naked in the wind, and to melt into the Sun?"
-Gibran