One of the biggest problems faced by eReaders in Australia is the lack of legitimate means of buying eBooks. But JD at Bookbee has told us all that Pan Macmillian has launched an Australian eBook store, although it’s a little lacking in the user friendly stakes.
Here’s some more iPad news, fresh off the presses: Strangely, most consumers are not idiots and will not pay exorbitant amounts of money to read newspaper iPad apps when they can find news cheaply and easily elsewhere.
I honestly can’t tell you what it’s like to see and touch and consume news, magazines and comics on the iPad. You just have to experience it. But I can tell you what to read to blow your mind.
Subscription to the print edition: $US2.29/week. Subscription to the online edition: $US1.99/week. Subscription to both the print and online editions: $US2.69/week. Subscription to the iPad edition: $US3.99/week.
On the one hand, you have the New York Times: “I am an internet news application!” And then you have the Wall Street Journal: “I am a colour newspaper!” And then you have USA Today: “I like Skittles!”
Publishers HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster have signed a deal with Amazon to provide ebooks for the Kindle. The arrangements will allow the publishers to choose prices for the ebooks and according to HarperCollins CEO Brian Murray have left his company’s “digital future [...]more assured today than it was two months ago.” [Electronista]
WSJ has reported on itself by saying that “according to a person familiar with the matter”, their monthly iPad subscription will cost $US17.99 a month. Now, I’m no Yank, nor plan on buying an iPad, but that seems high, no?
You’ll notice a major publisher is missing from this slide: Random House; the biggest one in the world, actually.
