02.Feb.2010 War Is Not The Answer

When will all this senseless bloodshed stop? After the destruction of the VHS/Beta Wars, the chaos of the HDDVD/BluRay spat, and the decades-long Plasma/LCD debacle, Laura Miller at Salon shows us another conflict rising up from the ashes of peace: The iPad vs. Kindle Wars

Ultimately, if the iPad takes off, the Kindle is in serious trouble. In order to maintain the complete, current selection of titles that is one of its device’s great features, Amazon has to be willing to come to terms with publishers. Publishers, eyeing the prospect of millions of new iPad owners — people who’d never have bought a Kindle, but are game to try out iBooks — now feel more free to threaten to restrict Amazon’s supply of e-books if their terms aren’t met. If the iPad offers all (or nearly all) of the convenience of the Kindle, plus color (imagine the graphic novels!) on top of the ability to watch videos, surf the Web and check e-mail, many potential Kindle buyers will be happy to fork over the extra cash for an iPad instead.

One interesting point the author makes is that most of the cost of a book is not in printing, but in royalties, promotion, design and other immaterial things, so by her reasoning an e-book is not that much cheaper to create than a printed book. I’m not sure if I’m buying that . A lot of the cost of a book is tied up in immaterial things certainly, but her calculations don’t include the cost of the publishing company itself (secretaries, CEOs, Manhattan office buildings, and so forth).