Apple Will Save Publishing and Redefine eBooks

Interesting article by Carly Z over at GearDiary in regards to the Apple Tablet as an ebook reader, which at this point is all but assumed. This piece is asking the question, Apple as a Bookstore: Savior of Reading or Doomsday Scenario?

Personally I have a feeling that it will be much more the former. That Apple will not only make huge strides toward saving traditional publishing but will also school all existing ebook efforts as to how its done. But first here are some of GearDiary’s points:

You want me to pay HOW MUCH for a book?

In my opinion, there are only a few ways this will be a huge negative for consumers. The $9.99 pricepoint has been aggressively established for new vanilla ebooks, and Apple wouldn’t want to immediately be undercut by Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo right out of the gate. Even if Apple went into lockdown mode and booted all ebook readers out of the app store (more on that in a moment), there are other smartphones tablets, and dedicated ebook readers all using competitor’s stores.

So Apple needs to be mindful of the existing price points. But let’s say Apple decides, “Hey, we’re Apple, and we can charge $11.99 because our books are color and on the Apple Tablet.”, there’s no reason to believe the other big bookstores would follow suit. If anything, they’d maintain and promote their $9.99 pricing, since it would give them a major advantage over Apple.

Tasty Slate’s Take- Apple will go far beyond the existing ebook format to provide a rich media experience. Current offerings in ebook reading from Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble Nook offer arguably a less satisfying experience than traditional books. The content is black and white, comparatively lower resolution and with no added content. Look for Apple to offer a compelling alternative with color and video as just the tip of the iceberg.

Online content, author participation, ancillary media- interviews, music, live events will greatly enrich Apple’s ebook offerings and make them ultimately more valued than traditional books. This will make the premium price seem like a real bargain next to standard-issue ebooks and might even someday lead to a premium ebook costing as much as a traditional book. This will go a long way to getting both customers and publishers on board with Apple’s effort.

Format Wars…two files go on, only one comes out:

Currently, the formats in ebooks shake out generally like this: ePUB, Amazon, a few dying formats (eReader PDB, for example.) Every major store uses ePUB except Amazon, but what will the future hold if Apple steps into the fray? Unless Apple is way more invested in ebooks already, to the point where they are troubling themselves with inventing a proprietary format, it’s likely they’ll be using ePUB, simply because it is flexible, easy to format and can easily handle videos (for those “enhanced” ebooks).  Apple could easily choose to boot Barnes and Noble, Kindle, Stanza, et al from the store, and instead provide ebooks through iTunes.

Tasty Slate’s Take- I see almost no reason for Apple to support ePUB or any existing ebook format because it gives them little DRM control nor little place to innovate as Steve Jobs loves to do. Instead look for a whole new format that permits all manner of enhanced, rich media and goes way beyond what any existing ebook format has ever done before.

Apple has a massive advantage as a closed-system manufacturer of both the hardware and software. They can completely optimize their ebook format for the Apple Tablet with no concern for supporting legacy equipment. This is where Amazon and Barnes and Noble faltered. Even though they came up with their own hardware- primarily as a means to control distribution and digital rights management- they were greatly constrained by the limits of exisiting e-ink technology. If you’ve ever held an Amazon Kindle in your hands you’ll note it has little of the wow factor of an iPhone or even most tablet PCs. Look for Apple to kill here.

In a nutshell

Apple will do what it does best- take on an existing market with some established but non-dominant players and leap forward several generations. This was Apple’s strategy for the iPod and iPhone and they quickly left the existing offerings in their dust. Instead of looking at this from the perspective of how will Apple fit into the publishing and ebook worlds, it’s likely we’ll soon be analyzing how those worlds ever got along without Apple.