Last week, Apple offered Canada its birthday greetings by officially launching the iBookstore in the country. Although the free iBooks app has technically been available to Canadians with an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch since the end of May, customers north of the border could previously only take advantage of free public domain classics such as Pride and Prejudice and Dracula.
On July 1, three of the big-five publishers announced their books would now be available for purchase in Canada’s iBookstore: Hachette (including Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers); HarperCollins (with a special edition of Katherine Govier’s The Ghost Brush); and Simon & Schuster (with Stephen King’s newest tome, Under the Dome).
Noticeably absent is Random House, which has not yet agreed to the agency pricing model the rest of the publishers have negotiated in the U.S. or Canada. Under the agency model, it’s the publishers who set the prices rather than the retailer, allowing them to exceed the $9.99 ceiling that many customers have come to see as standard e-book pricing.
The Canadian market for e-books is still lagging significantly behind its U.S. counterpart, and a number of titles – blockbusters and independent publishers alike – are still conspicuously absent from Apple’s digital storefront. But downloading newly released e-books is finally a reality for owners of the company’s products, including the long-awaited iPad.
Steve Osgoode, HarperCollins’ senior director of digital business development, is optimistic about the potential for iBookstore sales in Canada. “We have been thrilled with both the promotional support that our titles have received as well as the sales we've seen through this first weekend,” he said. “Our Canadian-authored titles in particular have been featured throughout the store and broadly supported by consumers.”
With agency pricing, Canadians will see e-book prices range widely. While The Ghost Brush, with an extended edition exclusive to the e-book format, can be downloaded for C$9.99, a mega-seller like Under the Dome costs C$20.99. Falling in between, 2008’s Outliers goes for C$14.99 (and sits at #15 on the U.S. iBookstore’s top 20 list), while thousands of titles are also available below that range.
Simon & Schuster Canada president Kevin Hanson said in a release, “We are delighted that we can now bring our books to Canadian readers who have eagerly anticipated the pleasures of reading on the iPad, iPhone or iPod touch.” In a statement released on the same day, Hachette’s SVP of digital publishing, Maja Thomas, expressed similar sentiments, adding, “After such great HBG sales performance in the iBookstore in the U.S., we look forward to even more success in Canada.”
