Apple's influence sees Amazon e-book prices rise

The dust has hardly settled on Apple's launch of the iPad, but publishing house Macmillan has already asked Amazon to increase the price of e-books sold in the Kindle Store.

Just a few days after the launch of the iPad, which, according to Steve Jobs, makes a perfect e-book reader, the publishing house, with titles on the Kindle Store and the iBook Store has asked Amazon to increase pricing.

Macmillan's titles were until now available for $9.99, but they will in the future sell for between $12.99 and $14.99.  Amazon insists that it had no choice but to follow the publisher's instructions--although it did remove them from sale for a day--but has made it clear that it finds the current pricing too high.  But that's the problem: Amazon can't do without content from such a big publishing house, and so has had to increase prices against its wishes.

After its success in imposing its own pricing policy on the world of digital music, is Apple planning to do the same for online publishing?

Change of direction

Although Apple managed to impose a single price policy for iTunes on the major record labels (something which finally changed last year), things will be different for publishing houses who will be able to decide the price of their own e-books.  The die was to guarantee a place in the iBook Store, with more guaranteed revenue than is available from the Kindle Store.

Of course, the iBook Store will need to take off as rapidly as the Kindle Store, but it seems most of the big players aren't worried about this and have signed already.  What remains to be seen though is whether other editors will join Macmillan in rebelling against Amazon's pricing policy ...

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