Ebook Pricing
Hugh McGuire (PressBooks / LibriVox / Iambik ), Neelan Choksi (Lexcycle), Trip Adler (Scribd), Michael Tamblyn (Kobo), Joe Wikert (O'Reilly Media, Inc.)
Is $9.99 the new “normal” for ebook pricing? Or is the sweet spot closer to $3.99, or $1.99, through the iTunes store? As the age of ebooks dawns, publishers are struggling to find pricing that works for their customers and their business models. It’s a time of transition fraught with challenges and opportunities.
Hugh McGuire
PressBooks / LibriVox / Iambik
Hugh McGuire is the founder of PressBooks, simple but powerful online bookmaking tool, that outputs EPUB, typeset PDF, and web versions of books. He’s the founder of LibriVox.org, a maker of free volunteer-read public domain audiobooks, and once called “perhaps the most interesting collaborative cultural project this side of Wikipedia.” Other projects include a commercial audiobook company, iambik audio.
Neelan Choksi
Lexcycle
Neelan Choksi is the CEO of Lexcycle, the company behind Stanza. With over 2.0 million users in over 60 countries and over 12 million eBooks downloaded, Stanza is the most popular eBook reader for the iPhone and IPod Touch.
Lexcycle was acquired by Amazon in April. Prior to joining Lexcycle, Neelan was the COO at SpringSource (recently acquired by VMWare), the company behind the popular open source Spring Framework. Neelan served as the co-founder and President at SolarMetric, a leading object relational mapping provider, which was acquired by BEA Systems in 2005. Neelan also worked for TechTrader, Andersen Consulting Strategic Services and Exxon Research and Engineering. He currently serves on the board of Tasktop Technologies. Neelan is a graduate of MIT (and was part of the often-publicized MIT Blackjack team), Stevens Institute of Technology, and the University of Chicago Booth Graduate School of Business.
Trip Adler
Scribd
Scribd is a social publishing site where people upload and share creative writing and various documents, regardless of file format. The company claims more than 55 million unique users to the network each month and well-known users such as Barack Obama, the World Economic Forum, major publishers and New York Times-bestselling authors.
Michael Tamblyn
Kobo
Michael manages publisher relationships and is responsible for Kobo’s catalogue of more than two million titles. In 1996, he co-founded Canada’s first online bookstore Bookshelf.ca, which was purchased by Indigo Books & Music in 1998, where he served as vice president of online operations. Most recently, Michael was the founding CEO of the supply chain agency BookNet Canada, where he launched the national sales reporting service BNC SalesData and authored the publishing technology call-to-arms “Six Projects That Could Change Publishing for the Better.”
Joe Wikert
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Joe Wikert is a publishing executive with 20+ years of industry experience. He is General Manager & Publisher at O’Reilly Media, Inc., where he manages the sales and editorial groups. Joe also serves as co-chair for O’Reilly’s Tools of Change (TOC) conference. Prior to joining O’Reilly he was a Vice President and Executive Publisher in the Professional/Trade division of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., and had management responsibility for the WROX and Sybex imprints. Joe regularly shares his publishing industry thoughts and outlook on his Publishing 2020 blog. He is also the proud owner of an Amazon Kindle and blogs about that experience on his Kindleville blog.