What I'm more concerned with, as an aspiring Strategy MBA, is finding the missing bits of logic in discussions of eBook readers. There has been a great deal of press lately on the supposed victor of some publishers in demanding variable pricing from Amazon for Kindle editions of their books, and much of the industry leverage is attributed to Apple's pending entry with the iPad, and their 'iBook Store', or whatever they are calling it.
So much of the digital media debate is focusing on pricing digital equivalents of old product bundles, no one discusses how these devices might result in a different bundling altogether. The "book" or single, or album, or TV season, is still the baseline. Selling a familiar product digitally is just the tip of the iceberg.
With eBook readers, what the vendors really want to do is define a platform. They want to define the new Windows for eBooks, or the high-def DVD format. Sony's had a dog and a horse: where they failed with Betamax, they succeeded with Blu-Ray.
The point isn't how much an eBook costs; it's what an eBook is, and that is defined by the platform. If Amazon wins, and their format is the standard, then they win the long game - they can license their format to other manufacturers. If ePub readers - the Nook and Sony products - win, then that format defines what people develop for.
Since the iPad uses the ePub format, I'm going to guess there is a lot more leverage for that open standard than for the Kindle, unless (and I am uncertain) the Kindle can use that format.
Where consumers win is where the format leads to new kinds of books. The current bundling of test prep books with DVDs will seem like 18th-century hornbooks compared to what an open format with interactive elements, tied to a national or global data network, can do.
