2010 began with e-book platforms jockeying for content from publishers who didn’t want to give away the farm anymore, no matter how badly customers wanted cheap titles.
Six months into the year, the issue of who is in control of content pricing has been settled — but the platforms for delivery are still in flux.
On Monday Barnes & Noble reduced the price of its Nook e-reader device by $60 to $199, and announced a Wi-Fi-enabled version of the device for $149.
Just hours later, Amazon.com stole some of Barnes & Nobles’ thunder by announcing it had slashed the price of its Kindle e-reader hardware to $189 – a drop of $70.
Touche.
Amazon’s Kindle has fallen in price several times since it arrived on the scene in 2007 at $400. Barnes & Noble’s Nook cost $259 when it was released in late 2009. But the current “it” gadget, Apple’s iPad, for all its popularity and status-symbol appeal still costs nearly $500. With their technical limitations, a fire sale is one of the few avenue left for Barnes & Noble and Amazon to exploit vs. the “must have” iPad.
The price war mirrors that recently seen in the video game industry, with Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony reluctantly dropping prices of its hardware to woo new buyers as each unique unit settled comfortably into a niche and stagnation began to loom.
But neither device is a heavyweight when compared to the iPad, which sucked all the air out of the room and gave publishers the leverage they needed to prevail in a high-profile game of corporate brinksmanship over the prices of best-selling titles. The Kindle is still a monochrome paperweight with a reputation for Orwellian power trips, and the Nook is Johnny-come-lately, while the iPad is sweeping the nation and doing for e-books what the iPod did for music downloads.
What is your platform of choice for e-books — or are you still the kind who enjoys the feel of a dogeared paperback in your hands?
