As reported in the WSJ article:

"The Apple model would bring in less revenue per title for publishers and authors. Since Apple will take a 30% fee on sales, a $14.99 e-book will generate $10.49 for publishers. That publishers and authors stand to make lower revenue per book sold on the Apple model is one reason some are hesitating about signing up with the tablet.

But there is nevertheless a strong draw: In adopting the Apple model, the balance of power would shift at least partly back to publishers, which regain control of pricing. In setting higher prices, they could provide a level playing field for all e-book retailers. The potential for publishers is that the device may generate greater volume for e-book sales. "The reason why publishers will consider this is to bring in Apple as a major distributor of e-books," said the publishing executive. "The gamble is if Apple comes to the table with their sexy device and their millions of customers, will they dramatically increase the e-book business the way that Kindle did?"

The question remains whether the Apple tablet, due in March, will be a new chance for publishers to regain their foothold in the ebook market. 

"Under the new program, which takes effect on June 30, Amazon will pay authors and publishers 70 percent of a book's list price, net of delivery costs. The plan is limited to e-books whose list price is between $2.99 and $9.99.

Amazon says the Kindle has sold briskly since its introduction in 2007, but the online retailer is facing pressure from publishers concerned about dwindling royalties, as well as new, formidable entrants that could squeeze what e-booksellers make from each title."

Based on the Amazon press release, this new royalty option is another option to the standard DTP standard royalty option beginning June 30, 2010.  Additional details include:

"

• Delivery costs will be based on file size and pricing will be $0.15/MB. At today's median DTP file size of 368KB, delivery costs would be less than $0.06 per unit sold. This new program can thus enable authors and publishers to make more money on every sale. For example, on an $8.99 book an author would make $3.15 with the standard option, and $6.25 with the new 70 percent option...
• The author or publisher-supplied list price must be between $2.99 and $9.99
• This list price must be at least 20 percent below the lowest physical list price for the physical book
• The title is made available for sale in all geographies for which the author or publisher has rights
• The title will be included in a broad set of features in the Kindle Store, such as text-to-speech. This list of features will grow over time as Amazon continues to add more functionality to Kindle and the Kindle Store.
• Under this royalty option, books must be offered at or below price parity with competition, including physical book prices. Amazon will provide tools to automate that process, and the 70 percent royalty will be calculated off the sales price.
• The 70 percent royalty option is for in-copyright works and is unavailable for works published before 1923 (a.k.a. public domain books). At launch, the 70 percent royalty option will only be available for books sold in the United States."

Countries like France and Germany are looking to follow the path of the US companies like Google and Amazon but also to shape the transition to new economic and cultural model that ereaders will bring.

In other developing nations, like India and Kenya, it appears that the economics do not yet support widespread adoption.  It is still too expensive in comparison to books.  In a recent article in Business Daily Africa:

"James Ogolla, the business development manager at Oxford University Press, says that the high price makes the hardware unaffordable for many Kenyans.

"China is forecast to see e-reader sales jump from 800,000 in 2009 to three million in 2010, making up of 20% of the global market, according to a recent report by research firm DisplaySearch. The company goes on to forecast that China will surpass the U.S. to become the world's largest e-reader market before 2015, by virtue of its large population."

The article goes onto to note that none of the major competitors in the US and elsewhere (the Amazon Kindle, Sony, and the Barnes and Noble Nook) are offered.  Instead, there are several new competitors in this space looking to gain an early foothold.

Another interetsing aspect is that many of the ereader manufacturers, who are driving the ebook market, are prelaoding their devices with libraries of books. With China's weaker intellectural property laws, it should be interesting to see if authors are still able to protect the revenue streams against the growing power of the device manufacturers.

Considering Google's recent friction with the Chinese government over uncensoring Internet searches, it remains to be seen if any of the other leading device manufacturers (Kindle, Sony, the Nook) will decide to enter the Chinese market or be content with the rest of the world. 

Finally, at about 11 pm tonight, I began to wonder and to think.  I had the opportunity to feel the itch to write and enough anxiety to actually power up the computer to do it.

The old adage, "Writing is a process," makes me wonder if other authors feel that level of anxiet that I do.  If you are an author, do you ever struggle with the time constraints that life imposes?  Do you ever feel lost in their everyday identity? What are the distractions that deter you?

I'd be happy to continue the discussion.

"Amazon sold more electronic books than physical books on Christmas Day, due to the popularity of the Kindle e-reader, the online retailer reported. It was the first time e-books had led in sales.

In addition, the Kindle has become the most gifted item ever on Amazon, according to the company, which did not release sales numbers. "

"The government will help establish a comprehensive industry chain of digital publishing by 2013, according to officials from the Cabinet.

The Executive Yuan passed a budget for developing the country’s electronic reader industry Dec. 3 that will see the government invest more than NT$2.13 billion (US$66.25 million) in the following five years to develop Taiwan’s electronic book industry."

Additonally, the governmentis commited to developing 3 content platforms and a library of over 100,000 books.  If Taiwan can establish a leadership position with its device as a leading in the Chinese ereader market, this will be a significance development.

Skiff is meant to:

• work with multiple devices. They did not announce any specific devices yet, other than to mention their relationship with Marvell, a semi-conductor customer.
• help to deliver different types of content to consumers. It has an agreement with Sprint to provide 3G connectivity for Skiff's ereading dedicated devices.
• provide a different approach to ads along with Nielsen and comScore.
• is seeking to etablish industry standards for the ereading form-factor.

Thie Skiff is interesting because it is being developed as a potentially independent platform that may not be tied to a device or book retailer. 

Its interesting in this article that Forrester reports that even US customers feel that a fair price of an ereader is $50-$99. 

At what price do you think will convince most readers to adopt an ereader?

Another casualty may be the independent book stores, those wonderful stores with their quirky personalityies and community links.  They are also responsible for helping to identify local novels that may indeed become best-sellers. For example, Barbara Kingsolver's first novel, "The Bean Trees," as was reported in Mercurynews.com,

" was first discovered by local booksellers such as Clark Kepler of Kepler's Books in Menlo Park and Bill Petrocelli of Book Passage in Corte Madera, who promoted it to their customers. Since then, each of Kingsolver's successive books "has become more and more of a best-seller-mode type book," Petrocelli says."

Is the independentbookstore capable of re-inventing itself?  How does it fit in with the emergence of the ebook?