Shelf Awareness has some great ebook coverage today.  Blockquotes omitted:

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The last e-frontier: today Apple is beginning to sell more than 100 illustrated e-books on its iBookstore, according to theNew York Times. The e-titles, some of which are iBookstore exclusives, are children’s books, photography books and cookbooks from Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Hachette, Macmillan and Workman. Prices are expected to be “generally in line” with print prices.

“It finally gives us the opportunity to have our picture books join the e-book revolution,” Jon Anderson, publisher of S&S Children’s Publishing, told theTimes. “It gives us a great opportunity to monetize our content in a way that we previously haven’t been able to.” Sometime next year, S&S aims to release picture e-books at the same time as the print editions.

Among the books now e-vailable: the Olivia series, In the National Parks by Ansel Adams and some Amelia Bedelia and Fancy Nancy titles.

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You can run, but you can’t hide from e-books. The owners of Atlantis Books, “a postcard dream of a bookstore tucked away on the Greek island of Santorini… used to thrive on the legions of book-hungry cruise ship passengers who disembarked at Santorini each year, but recently staff members began to notice many of these tourists had e-books tucked under their arms with a year’s worth of reading already downloaded,” the Ode magazine reported. In  addition, customers who did buy print books were purchasing fewer due to new baggage weight restrictions imposed by the airlines. 

The solution? Atlantis Books launched Paravion Press, which publishes short fiction and essays in the public domain like The Beauties by Anton Chekhov and The Decay of the Art of Lying by Mark Twain. “For this sort of thing to work, it’s important people in the store are committed to the project,” said Craig Walzer, one of the bookshop’s founders of Atlantis Books. “Our first run sold because we were excited about the books and talked them up to customers.”

Walzer added, “Sometimes I think that going into publishing to help a bookstore is more ridiculous than opening a bookstore in the first place. I’m not sure it’s the most practical solution, but bookselling doesn’t really attract practical people, so maybe it’s the best possible impractical solution.”

In an introduction to a slide show of “some of the best faux-book covers for e-book readers and tablets,” Wired wrote, “We don’t just want to protect tablets and e-readers, but honor and personalize them, and maybe bring back some of the quaint pleasures of reading an old leather-bound volume at the same time.”

We can hear many of you thinking, You can bring back some of the quaint pleasures of reading an old leather-bound volume by reading an old leather-bound volume.

5 COMMENTS

  1. Article states: Prices are expected to be “generally in line” with print prices.

    Oh, great; another Apple attempt to screw up the e-book market. A year or so ago, Stevie stated that “nobody reads anymore”, now he seems to be trying to re-make the publishing industry in his own image–take-it-or-leave it, love-me-and-call-me-king-or-get-lost.

    e-books:
    Paper, binding, printing costs = zero.
    Shipping cost = zero
    Warehousing = zero
    Remainders = zero
    Converting to digital form = expensive, but a ONE TIME expense that cannot possibly come close to the costs of traditional p-books.

    The furthur cost saving/profit making advantage is the ability to never being caught off-guard by an unexpected runaway hit. Look at the number of p-booksellers who are bemoaning their under ordering the Mark Twain autobiography, this year’s unexpected holiday hit. Look at the publishers scrambling to get more copies into stores before the frenzy dies down. (Digital editions still available–no waiting, no e-book customer turned away.)

    And they want me to pay the same as a print book? Ain’t gonna happen. I’m not a member of the $9.99-or-die club, but I will NOT buy an e-book that is priced the same or higher than a p book…no matter how pretty the pictures.

  2. Lenne – apols for the ‘confused’ thing… I wish we could edit after the fact 🙂

    Chris – I am not so sure that Apple takes the blame. From what I have heard Apple did set up the Agency model idea in early talks, but the pricing levels came from the Publishers post facto.

    Agency Pricing is illegal in my view and both the US adminstration and the EU should be examining and outlawing it asap.

  3. Yes, the price is set by the publisher, not by Apple. (I will not pay the same for an ebook as a paper version either).

    I have a self published photography book that goes for roughly $40 in paper. The iBook price is $13.99. That is a big difference.

    Blame the publisher – not Apple!

    Paper Version
    http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/eclypso-photography-by-catharine-j-anderson/6450586

    iBook
    http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/eclypso/id443504126?mt=11

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