Sony is poised to dropped its prices on its new Sony ebook reader to $199 according to the article on Yahoo Finance. This will certainly spur more sales of ebook readers, breaking the first psychological price barrier (under $200). I think, however that $99 is the key psychological level... Whoever gets there first could dominate the market ... perhaps in time for Christmas!
With songs and content distributed with DRM there were 3 factors: price, ease of use, and security. Initial DRM implementations were fat, slow and overly secure. Apple won this game when it went for a ligher version of digital rights which was secure but easy to use (and also was relatively quickly broken by hackers...no matter), priced songs at $0.99 and provided easy access to them, and with a relatively inexpensive device. I think ebooks could follow the same pattern. Here the 3 factors are: price, ease of use, and distribution.
The availability of ebook readers is obviously critical which is why I believe the $99 barrier is key. At that price, I believe consumers will be much more willing to try it out. Secondly, there's got to be enough interesting content to buy on it. Here's the opportunity for publishers of all kinds. Yes, it's a little serving of which comes first the chicken or the egg, but it's time to begin to see that the devices are coming and the market will follow, so start getting your content ready now. Most eBooks are around $10. I'm not convinced this is the right or even final price. In fact, I think it's a starting point. Part of it is a carry over of paper-based publishing pricing to the digital world, just as we saw with digital music -- publishers trying to get as high a price as possible (if I recall correctly originally some music publishers started at $4.99 or $3.99 per song). I think we'll ultimately see lower, tiered pricing, but that could be a while, just as it was for music.
Sony's support of the open ePub standard format potentially gives it an initial advantage, as more people can more easily publish to it. From a publisher's perspective format won't matter as much as distribution -- the broader the better. Initially, publishers will likely choose whichever format and on-line or other 'venues' give it both the lowest production cost and the best distribution. Once production costs are reduced, by more automated production processes (and the technology for that is just emerging now), distribution will reign alone.
Like the initial iPods, these devices have to be connected to a computer. Wireless access should be part of the devices, which will stimulate more sales and opportunities for serial and episodic works, and enable impulse buying.
Ultimately, a key ingredient in the success of these devices will be which ever gives the reader (the human, not the device) the best experience of reading. I think there's still lots of room for experimentation here -- on both the device side, and on the content side. Yes, it should be easy on the eyes and easy to read, navigate etc. but it could also do more in terms of layout and images. There's room for growth there in both the devices and the ebook format standards.
This is a positive development in the market for both the consumers and the publishers. Now let's see how Amazon and the Kindle responds.
References:
NY Times article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/05/technology/personaltech/05sony.html
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