Electronic Publishing: The Year 2012 in Review e-Books Come of ...

However, in order to participate in KDP Select, Amazon requires exclusivity for at least
90 days. This deprives rivals such as Apple’s iBookstore, Barnes & Noble and
Smashwords.com, from tens of thousands of titles.
“Amazon flexes muscle with exclusivity, says Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords, an
early (and free) e-Book publishing service that now boasts more than 190,000 titles, and
is the largest distributor of self-published e-Books. Forbes.com called it “Apple’s biggest
unknown supplier of e-Books.”
“While no one is paying attention, Amazon’s working to lock indie authors into their
platform with KDP Select. Publishers don’t care, because they don’t yet understand that
authors are the future of publishing,” Coker insists.
THE APPLE MONOCULTURE: Apple became a serious player in the e-Book and
self-publishing worlds later in the game than Amazon, largely due to the wild popularity
of the iPad. While the game-changing iPhone was more than e-Book capable, the iPad
posed Apple’s first serious challenge to the Kindle as an e-Book reading device.
However, with its “walled garden” philosophy and a captive audience of fanatic
followers unlikely to change brands regardless of advantages offered by competitors,
Apple has not (as yet) been as welcoming to e-Book developers or to self-publishing
writers as Amazon... except those who are prepared to turn their backs on other outlets.
Yet its legions of loyal customers make Apple a potent force to acknowledge in 2012 and
beyond. As the next section explains, Apple is taking this challenge seriously.
PLAYING HARDBALL: With billions of dollars per year now at stake, competition in
the marketplace for e-Books has grown more cutthroat than ever. Apple made headlines
in 2012 when it was sued by the U.S. Department of Justice for conspiring to fix e-Book
prices with Macmillan, Penguin, Hachette, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster. Apple
was also lambasted for claiming exclusive rights to e-Books formatted using its “iBook”
tool, even if the author or publisher removed the e-Book from the iBookstore. On its part,
Amazon has faced criticism for its exclusivity policies, for royalty structures that
suppress e-Book prices, and (prior to the DOJ lawsuit against Apple) for selling e-Books
at a loss in order to stifle competition. While Google has made progress in 2012 toward
settling its long-running dispute with the Association of American Publishers and the
Author’s Guild for scanning millions of books without permission, its “Google Play” e-
Book store has been relatively absent from the headlines this year.
Foresighted observers of the publishing industry caution authors and publishers against
underestimating the power of the big online booksellers to sway consumer preferences,
which the giants are actively trying to do. Major booksellers clearly recognize that their
bottom lines are fatter from sales of “clicks” rather than “bricks” when there is no
physical inventory.
As a result, many authors and publishers feel that their print publishing options are more
limited, and more costly, than e-Books. Meanwhile, consumers are lured by the low
prices of e-Books and instant gratification. If a lay reader can buy the same story for $5