On January 27, 2010, Apple announced the iPad. The iPad has been described as a “large iPod Touch” by most people who have seen the device on the web, in person, or in print. Some newspaper companies are hoping that this device will help save them by giving those who prefer ebooks and blogs a portable and “digital” way to view their products. Several book publishers seem to be hoping the same thing. With the success of Amazon.com’s Kindle, it would seem that they’d be correct in their assumptions, but I beg to differ.
When Apple introduced the iPod back in October 2001, Apple also introduced a new software application called iTunes. I’m sure almost everyone under the age of 60 has at least seen or used iTunes in some way. But what most people don’t know is what iTunes did to the record labels.
Before iTunes became popular you either had to buy an entire CD to get your favorite radio hit, use a cumbersome MP3 download service, or download via bit torrent or similar product illegally.
That meant that most consumers would just buy the entire CD, even if they didn’t like the nine or so other songs on the record. So, in turn, the record labels would make $5-XX off individual CD’s. But iTunes introduced a new platform for selling music. It was an easy way to buy individual songs for as low as $0.99! So people didn’t have to “waste” their money on the other songs on a record. But that also meant that the record label might only make $0.25-0.XX on a purchase. So the record labels did lose quite a bit of money at first, but in the end I think they make it up in volume, or at least make it close to still be worth selling for such a low price.
In my opinion that may be what will happen with the newspaper and book publishers. The publishers are going to either have to sell the product for a low price and make it up in volume or sell it for a ridiculously high amount and hope they sell enough to make it worth “losing” the cheapies like myself, who aren’t going to pay $XX for a digital copy of their product.
I feel newspapers in specific should give away their product for free and run it on an ad system similar to what The Batavian does; but I also feel that they are going to have change the style of writing to be more personal and community oriented.
Comment below to let me know what you think. Do you prefer to read the news or books on the web? Would you be willing to pay for a digital copy?
