Just to clarify, KF8 is also available on the Mindle (the $79/$109 model in the USA), and on Kindle for Android.

You can see which features are available on which models here:

Enhanced Features for Kindle Books

I understand the emotional reaction to exclusivity. Of course, publishers have always had exclusivity. Oh, that’s not platform dependent, but if you didn’t like one particular publisher’s business practices, you couldn’t just buy your favorite author’s books from another publisher. Is that significantly different?

When you talk about a level playing field, that doesn’t mean that everyone has to start with the same capabilities. Let’s say that one athlete has trained extensively, using innovative techniques, and sacrificed for years building up for the event. Another athlete has stuck to the old training methods…they went for quick wins early on, but over time, became bloated and out of shape. The “level playing field” doesn’t mean that the in-shape athlete has to carry an extra 100 pounds to make it fair.

What isn’t level in this case? Barnes & Noble pays money for exclusives…so does Amazon. Amazon may have more money to do it right now, because their business model has been working better.

As to the question: yes, you can read NOOK books on a Kindle in a manner somewhat similar to reading Kindle books on a NOOK. They have NOOK for Web, as Amazon has the Cloud reader. You can certainly read NOOK books without owning a NOOK: they have free reader apps for iPads, Android tablets, iPhones, Android phones, PCs, Macs…not quite as many as Amazon, but a lot of options.

Publishers can also choose to publish books without DRM (Digital Rights Management)…Amazon allows that through Kindle Direct Publishing, and Tor (a major publisher) does all of their books that way. In that case, you can convert it for whatever device you want.

Resale doesn’t add to the production costs, but by analogy, it adds to the negative income creating upward price pressure. Does that 1980 reprint of Foundation do the same thing? Yes, but there is a very significant difference…sales cycle. The textbook is only valuable for a short period of time…a few years before the next edition comes out and becomes the required version. Year One, people buy it new. Year Two, many people buy it used depressing the market. It might seem that would reduce the price by reducing demand…but the demand is the same. If 25,000 students need the book in Year One, 25,000 probably need it in Year Two: the demand hasn’t changed. The used books have a very different cost structure…the student who is selling the book in Year Two didn’t have those production costs you mentioned. They don’t even have to recoup the price they paid for the book…it discounts the initial price, it’s not required to make them a profit.

So, the publisher has to make the initial sale make them profit for the multiple sales that will happen for that book.

In the case of Foundation, the book is still selling new sixty years later…that’s a very different calculation.

Equate price to energy expended…compare the energy expended by a runner during a 100m dash versus during a marathon: very high energy for a short period of time, or sustained energy for a long period of time.

This one is long! One last thing…yes, the resale of the Foundation p-book adds to the price of the Foundation e-book. E-books are likely supporting the profit margin of p-books to some extent, just as bestsellers support niche market books. It’s not quite the same way, because more gross still comes from p-books…but there is an impact. Higher profit supports lower profit when you have a population of books to sell, not just one.

Thanks again for making me think this morning!

Hope it becomes more widespread, though, as it looks to be HTML5 and CSS3 based.

Thanks for the reply.

I think my reaction to the exclusivity deal is more “gut” than logical. Something about it just doesn’t “feel” right. I love Amazon and use them extensively, but I believe in competition and a level playing field for the benefit it provides to the user. While I may be able to install kindle apps on nook devices… what about the other way around? I have a Kindle 3g (several, actually). Can I read B&N exclusives on that in any form? Then there’s the whole concept of “this is a battle” and if one company (say Amazon) wins the battle, do we trust them not to jack up prices indiscriminately? Maybe they won’t. Or maybe it’ll be a while before they do. Or maybe they bully the publishers and take over the market and next thing you know everything in the Kindle store is $20 and AMZN’s profit margins are AAPL-like. That should be the goal for their shareholders, anyway. No company nor government exists who is purely altruistic in motive.

On the textbook pricing…how does resale raise cost of production for the publisher? The cost to the publisher has to do with paper, binding, printing, quality control, author $, editor $, shipping, distribution. Where do used books come into that equation any more than a 1980 copy of Foundation by Isaac Asimov comes into the equation for a new pBook of the same on the shelf at B&N? (or the eBook for that matter?)

Thanks for the enlightenment!
-Jason

Privacy, and ceding your identity to someone else, are two different things. Knock virtual wood, I do find that people often respect my privacy…oh, that doesn’t mean they don’t find things out sometimes, but they don’t tend to share them publicly.

That’s not the same as saying someone can change your public profile and tweet for you…

Barnes & Noble has done some good things, and yes, led in some important ways, but I do think they have a tough row to hoe. My instinct is that they survive in some way, but not in the current form.

Good, you made me feel like it might make sense.

Thanks for the lengthy and thoughtful post!

Let’s start with the question of exclusivity. Quite simply, retailers will pay a lot for exclusivity. I’m sure Amazon had to pay relatively big dollars for the Ed McBain books. That’s hard to resist. If you sell it to Amazon, who are you not going to reach? Are there people who have NOOKs that don’t have either a PC or a Mac? Sure, there are some, and yes, people may not want to read on a PC or Mac. How about on an iPad or a Fire? That’s starting to stretch it.

Part of the question here is how much people read exclusively on limited platform devices. If the HDDVD and Blu-ray debate was going on now, how many people would say, “I’ll just watch the movie on my tablet, or my phone.” Hardware is becoming less significant.

You can already read Kindle books on Barnes & Noble devices…many people do. One solution is the Cloud Reader, but people also root their devices. It’s tougher with, say, a NOOK Simple Touch…but I think device independence is on the way.

On the competition front, I don’t think you can lower price because the same product you sold before is being sold again used instead of being bought new. Let’s say you sell a book for $100, and it is resold for $50 instead of someone buying it new. Effectively, you sold the book for $75 twice. Does that mean you should have sold it for $50 to compete with the $50 price? What happens if somebody buys it for $50…and then sells it for $25? Now, you’ve effectively sold it for $37.50 twice…cutting the value of the sales in half.

You can think of it as that resale is raising the costs of the book for the publisher…and, in economics, that should raise the price, right?

I appreciate your information on the log-ins! I know there are things where I go with what I think someone will do, rather than what they say. Amazon’s “experimental features” are a good example. I know Amazon has the right to discontinue them, but I don’t think they will. However, if someone tells me they can post on my Twitter account, that power worries me…even if it has never, ever been used in an abusive manner before. If it was…I’ve betrayed my followers. I know that sounds dramatic, but it’s how I would feel.

What about Amazon’s Format 8? Won’t that supersede the “Kindle” format?