HarperCollins pressuring Amazon to hike Kindle prices

The problem I have with it that ebooks shouldn't cost as much as a physical book. What exactly are publishers "publishing" with an ebook. There's no paper, printing, transportation, distribution, or other traditional costs associated with the ebooks.

Realistically Apple will help independent writers sell more books.and maybe even spur some writers that feel like they've been screwed to strike out on their own if sales are large enough in the ebook markets.

Amazon is crying foul because they want to look like they are getting hurt by this. They aren't, nobody is forcing Amazon to carry the ebooks, if they are offended by the price they can just refuse to carry the book and see how that works out.

I think Amazon is more evil than Apple (even though I have a Kindle) and when they were trying to do the 70/30 deal with the newspapers where they got 70% and unlimited rights to the data it just confirmed that they are ruthless and not at all concerned about getting the industry to move to epaper. If they were smart they would have done a 30/70 cut deal last year and they wouldn't be so scared now.

Of course some of this may be Apple getting back at Amazon for the Music wars a couple years back.

I too like 9.99 and have only purchased one book above that (from Amazon), sadly I'm still paying 20+ bucks for tech books from Manning (in pdf), I hope they drop to 14.99, I'll buy more in that case.

I think 10-15 bucks is way to expensive for ebooks when i can go to the grocery store, and get top sellers in soft cover for 8 bucks.

I most likely wont be buying any ebooks from anywhere.

I can't see how some always want to blame Apple for raising prices. Fist point remember Apple has and still fights with the record labels to keep prices down and mostly because Apple has such a huge influence (they are the best selling store of digital music by far). But this time Apple is approaching eBooks differently. Amazon to some degree as of now have a monopoly on digital books so the publishers can bend to Amazons rules plus Amazon wants to sell kindles so making digital book prices attractive is worth it. So now Apple comes along(competition to Amazon) with a killer product and iTunes eBook store to go along with it. A very similar model to Amazons Kindle/Amazon Bookstore, and the book publishers see the competition as well so now they have leverage they once did not have against Amazon. It's simple business. As far as consumers, competition will keep prices fair and in the long run we will see better content also in digital books and readers again driven by competition. So I say BRING ON THE COMPETITION APPLE!!!

I own a kindle and buy more books than I did before. I will buy an iPad but using it for reading books is unlikely, the kindle's e-ink is perfect for daylight reading.

There's no way I will buy DRMed e-books that aren't discounted in comparison to the physical version.

Color pictures, videos, animated diagrams etc. won't change that.

This is the same argument as buying music on iTunes. The publishers want to charge more than people are willing to pay. People will either agree that it is fair to charge as much or more for an e-product with low manufacturing and distribution costs versus a physical copy, or they will stay away and ebooks will fail. The publishers argue about "hurting the value" of their product, but really is this any more different than buying a physical book with a $30 cover price for $8.99 in walmart? I smell price gouging and dare I say collusion!

Amazon is far from the consumer's friend it is made out to be, and Apple isn't really pushing up prices. In the long-term, Apple's involvement will actually reduce prices of ebooks.

The best explanation of Amazon's pricing policies I've read is here:

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/01/amazon-macmillan-an-outsiders.html

What I don't understand is this fear that if Amazon raises their prices to $14.99 that they're going to start losing business to Apple. Serious readers and people who have already seen the benefits of an e-ink reading device are not going to start snatching up iPads and killing their eyes using iBooks. And people who would use an iPad (or any LCD device) for reading likely aren't aware of or don't care about the superiority of e-ink either, so that's a sale that Amazon wouldn't have gotten anyway. I think Amazon is going to be just fine in the end.

The publishers are idiots - why should an ebook of a bestseller cost *more* than a dead-tree copy? Are the publishing industries going to try the "raise the price of your product, then whinge about how the lost sales are caused by piracy" tactic that the music and movie folks love?

This sounds like the 'convenience fee' I get charged for paying some bills online. If publisher aren't carefully many people will go the piracy route. The books should be priced so that I don't need to worry about picking the occasional bad book.

I wonder how much money textbook publisher will make from ebooks. When I was in college, everything that could be pirated...WAS pirated. College students are poor.

Time will tell.