Self-published e-books to make it to Apple's iPad for almost no cost
Big publishers are flocking to the iPad, readying to publish electronic versions of their bestselling books on Apple's much-anticipated tablet device due to launch April 3. But smaller publishing houses are making the move …
Context & Ripple Effects
Apple has spent the run-up to the April 3 launch positioning the iPad as a reading device: it revealed the iBooks Store and app in January, showed off text-to-speech and free e-book support earlier this month, and matched Amazon's Kindle pricing when iBooks prices surfaced last week. Big publishers were always coming along for that ride.
What changes with this report is who else gets on the shelf: self-publishers and small houses can reach the iBooks audience at almost no cost, extending the App Store's long-tail economics to books just as the device ships. The confirmed relationships note the April 3 ship date is on track amid growing buzz, so the storefront opens day one with both bestsellers and indie titles.
First-order effects
- Self-published authors and small presses get near-zero-cost distribution into a major new storefront on launch day, sitting alongside big-publisher bestsellers in the same iBooks catalog.
- Apple's iBooks Store opens April 3 with long-tail inventory it did not have to pay advances to acquire, deepening the catalog against Amazon's Kindle store.
Second-order effects
- Amazon now faces a rival bookstore whose shelf space costs indie authors essentially nothing, pressuring its own self-publishing terms and any exclusivity deals.
- A services layer around formatting and delivering indie e-books to iBooks becomes an opening for intermediaries, since 'almost no cost' still requires getting files into Apple's pipeline.
Third-order effects
- Gatekeeping in publishing shifts from acquisition editors at publishing houses to platform storefronts, with curation and discovery controlled by whoever runs the device ecosystem.
- If the pattern holds, book retail follows the App Store structure: a small number of platform owners capturing distribution while content creation fragments down to individuals.
The trend: Book distribution is consolidating around device-maker storefronts where the marginal cost of listing an independent title approaches zero, importing App Store economics into publishing.