Why are iBooks so expensive?

I find it hard to believe that, according to iBooks postings, no one has raised the issue of iBooks charging its customers 35% - 70% more than competitors. Case in point: Today I checked the price of an e-book through iBooks and Amazon.

Contract as Promise: A Theory of Contractual Obligation

iBooks price: 28.99

Amazon price: 16.96

Difference: 12.03 12.03/16.96 = 71% more on iBooks than Amazon.

Yet I am to believe that no one is questioning this. i have search for a question and/or answer to what added value Apple provides its customers for the huge price increases over competitors. I have found no recent postings addressing this issue. My 45 minutes of search produced only postings on this issue that are from 2011 or earlier. I spent another hour trying to find a way to contact iBooks support for an answer to may question. There is no apparent way to get through, but you will be steered to issues about hardware that will frustrate you.

Apple has very little control over the pricing on iBooks due to the Agency Pricing deals they signed with the major publishers. All the publishers decide how to price the book in iBooks. If you want to complain then complain to the publisher houses about how high the prices are.

i think the authors/publishers set the prices, so in that case you need to ask them instead of apple. Does it matter? Apple users can buy from any store the want, windows/android users can't even read books from the iBookstore.

The ebook pricing system is currently run by the publishers, not Apple. You need to convince the publishers that your idea of how it should be makes sense for them.

http://www.macworld.com/article/160120/2011/05/ebook_prices_outrage_innovation.h tml#lsrc.rss_main talks about why ebooks are so pricy compared to dead tree books.

The macworld article makes sense. But the most of the books in the apple ibooks are overpriced. I was going to buy a kindle book the price was reasonable $15.39. Then I thought I have ibooks on my iphone lets see if they have the book cause I don't want to download the kindle app on my iphone if I don't need to. Well ibooks has what I'm looking for but for $27.99; $12.60 more then the kindle edition. So I'm sticking with Kindle from now on they are better priced and there selection is massive. I like Apple but I definitely don't love them. My next upgrade I might even switch to Android if the iphone 5 doesn't wow me.

I have come across this as well - a book I was interested in cost $25.99 in the iBooks store and $14.29 in the Kindle store...

Does anybody know why the huge difference?

Or just download the kindle App and enjoy lower prices.

Markets are self correcting.

One thing the article didn't mention was longevity which is something that's an issue where libraries and publshers are having issues. An e-book can be read by millions of readers without wearing out. A paper copy needs replacing after a certain number of readers have used it. A publisher can rely upon having repeat sales of a paper copy, but in theory will only sell an electronic copy once.