Books and e-books

Tuesday's FT had a full-page discussion by David Gelles and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson of e-readers, e-books, and the publisher revolt against Amazon's loss-leader strategy to hook people on its Kindle. The gist: Publishers are ecstatic that Apple has entered the fray. They want competition, and they're trying to force Amazon to accept the bookstore pricing model, which gives most of the money to them. The dust-up between Amazon and Macmillan was the opening move. (Amazon blinked.) Now Rupert Murdoch, owner of Harper Collins, is weighing in, criticizing Amazon's below-cost pricing. The question for me is, where does this leave bookstores? The FT writers say that "this will kill that" (to quote Victor Hugo) - e-books will wreck the bookseller model. But they note that publishers want bookstores to continue, because they're a known commodity. From my own involvement with a Berkeley bookstore, I would say that the terms of trade for smaller bookstores especially is highly unfavorable. What will publishers do to help them endure? One thing that comes to mind is a "Buy the book, get the download free" offer. This might be especially attractive to an academic audience.

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