My wife owns a Kindle. I’ve been buying Peanut Press (eReader, now Barnes & Noble) books for a decade. I thought I would buy a nook, but the iPad changed all that. Now I have all the platforms in one device. No, it’s not e-ink, but it runs Evernote, so its all good.
But that’s not what this is all about. Mary loves(d) her Kindle. The size is great. The books are usually priced competitively. And Amazon had a great selection. Enter Apple and their agency model. First the price on Kindle books went up, plus they had sales tax. Now, Mary is finding that series where she has multiple books in Kindle format are no longer coming out for the Kindle. I haven’t spent a bunch of time looking at which books aren’t available, but I have to assume that Apple is at the core of this issue. I guess I should really check to see if the books she can’t get on Kindle are available in iBooks. Actually, I probably shouldn’t. If they were, she might just take my iPad (something she’s already threatened to do.)
I don’t know what the solution is. Realistically, I understand the publishers need to control prices. If I believed the authors were making most of that money, I’d be even more behind it, but I don’t think they do. I’ll be interested to see if authors can ditch the publishing companies. Nine Inch Nails has done it on the music side. Cory Doctorow has been releasing free ebooks of all his books for quite a while. Both Amazon and Apple have self-publishing modes (assuming you buy an ISBN.)
I’m looking to the future of ebooks, but I’m frustrated that my wife can’t get the books she wants.
