Apple Also Throws a Monkey Wrench into Amazon's eBook Plans

Well, directly on the heels of my recent blog post, news comes out that Amazon has in fact planned to unveil a new program that will give authors and publishers the lion’s share of profit from sales of Kindle books beginning June 30, 2010. A whopping 70% will be reaped by qualifying books from publishers. The new program is said to be in addition to the old DTP royalty scheme, and will not likely replace it. In order for a book to qualify for the program, Amazon says that the list price must be between $2.99 and $9.99, in addition to being at least 20% below the list price of the physical book.

A report in The Wall Street Journal says that, in addition to the conditions highlighted above, the book must also “be made available for sale in all geographies in which the author or publisher has rights; the title will be included in a set of Kindle features, such as text-to-speech; and books must be 'offered at or below price parity with competition, including physical book prices.' "

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Will Google Editions Threaten Amazon Kindle's Dominance?

So, we’re really excited about the launch of Google Editions, which is set for some time during the first half of this year (extremely vague, I know). What has a lot of authors excited is the fact that they will be offering a 63% royalty to authors and publishers, thereby keeping 37% if books are sold via the Google Books database, but you'll only see 45% for sales from third-party retailers, because they have to offer the standard 55% wholesale discount to them automatically. That is how the eBook market works. But at least you as the publisher will no longer have to worry about print costs, so whatever you price the book at, 45% of the retail price is yours, if the book is sold by vendors other than Google Books (a whopping 63% is yours if it’s sold by them).

A client of ours recently forwarded an email they received from Amazon, which described an important amendment to the Terms and Conditions with regard to the “List Price” of Kindle books. Some of the language is as follows:

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