WSJ: Apple Talking to Book Publishers for iTablet (and iPhone?)
The Wall Street Journal "leaks" that Apple is negotiating with publisher Harper Collins over the rights to market e-books on Apple's "latest creation", presumably the iTablet/iSlate.
We say "leaks" because, well, it's the WSJ and the story credits contributions from someone who's been getting an awful lot of awfully good Apple information recently. Also, we've heard for a while now that Apple has been in talks with traditional print media book, magazine, and newspaper publishers in order to line up content for the iTablet -- and presumably the iPhone, iPod touch, and other iTunes connected devices, since that's Apple's ecosystem and their forte.
So, on one hand this story serves to firm up expectations that a tablet style device will be announced, and set them as to what one of its new features will be -- doing from print media what the iPod did for music (and what has tried to do for movies and TV, despite Hollywood's myopia). Here's the crux of it:
Brian Murray, the chief executive of HarperCollins, said in December that e-books enhanced with video, author interviews and social-networking applications could command higher retail prices for publishers than current e-books. Many of the country's largest publishing houses are worried about the sale of new bestsellers for only $9.99 in the e-book format. New releases of enhanced e-books could sell for $14.99 to $19.99, a person familiar with the situation said. HarperCollins is a unit of News Corp., which also owns The Wall Street Journal.
Sounds like iTunes LP (for music) and iTunes Extras (for movies) would get an e-book-centric companion, perhaps magazines and newspapers as well. (Though magazines and newspapers traditionally involve subscription services, something Apple, despite the many years of rumors, has yet to offer for music or TV).
What remains to be seen is, if these negotiations pan out, whether Apple will focus on print-media-gone-digital as the killer feature of the new device/service or just one of several (like the iPhone's wide-screen ipod, internet communicator, phone combo pitch).
[Thanks to @jordanak1 for the head's up!]
Editor-in-Chief of iMore, Executive Producer at Mobile Nations, co-host of Iterate and ZEN and TECH, cook, grappler, photon wrangler.
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Wonder if the islate is going to have an e ink screen built in?
I don't know about the e-ink. It needs to be color of they are going to market magazines. I have played with some of the ebook readers. They have a long way to go. I think this thing will blow the kindle, etc out of the water. Along with all other tablets I have seen.
I don't think the problem of ebooks today is that they are too cheap. Yesterday I've been looking at amazon to buy books for the kindle app for my iphone. Most of the ones I was interested in were more expensive in kindle format than in print. I think the real problem is that publisher must start to sell ebooks with a discount compared to the real book price.
anybody think apple will put one of those new 3qi displays in these new creations? I haven't done a lot of research, it just seems like it's be practical for them to do. Apparently they do eBooks really well too. well find out soon enough but i have my fingers crossed.