What will the e-book market look like after Apple’s iPad goes on sale April 3? New reports are beginning to paint a picture of at least what pricing might look like.
According to a site that follows Apple products and rumors, prices for most fiction best sellers will be $9.99. App Advice published a pre-release screenshot earlier this week from the upcoming iBookstore, with prices for several current best sellers indicated.
Magazine Pricing
This means that e-best sellers on the iPad will be competitive with Amazon’s prices for its Kindle e-reader. Some industry analysts had suggested that prices of popular e-books on the iPad could be higher than Amazon’s. This was because Apple is taking a cut of whatever prices publishers set, and because Amazon was cutting prices, sometimes losing money, in order to pump up its market share.
While the prices of best-selling e-books are apparently stabilizing, the pricing structure for iPad-delivered magazines and newspapers looks to be as varied as the publications themselves.
One of the few successful paid-content publishers, The Wall Street Journal, said earlier this week that it plans to charge $17.99 per month for an iPad subscription. The Journal also reported that Esquire magazine will sell a version of its April issue for $2.99, $2 less than on the newsstand, and that it will contain music videos for original songs containing the phrase “somewhere in Mississippi.”
In another pricing model, Rodale’s Men Health magazine will offer 10 free, ad-supported pages from its April and May issues, but a download of the full issue will be same as the newsstand price — $4.99.
Other E-Reader Software on iPad
It’s possible the e-book market will allow for some crossover of titles from one source on another company’s playback device, which could result in rapidly changing pricing models.
Ross Rubin, director of industry…