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Virtually all the books in the iBookstore's top 20 are available to buy more cheaply as paperbacks from Amazon.co.uk or as e-books for the Kindle via Amazon.com.
It suggests that the agency model either is not yet being applied correctly in the UK, or UK publishers have been granted a window before moving other e-booksellers—such as Amazon or Waterstone's—onto the model. A">http://www.thebookseller.com/news/119599-publishers-back-milestone-ipad-... spokesperson for Waterstone's confirmed last week: "There has been no change to our e-book pricing or offer."
The iBookstore now lists more than 25,000 titles, but most of these are not yet available to buy, while those titles "featured" on the iBookstore number less than 500. By contrast Amazon.com's Kindle app lists more than 388,000 available titles.
The highest priced title in the iBookstore's top 10 is The Big Short (Penguin) by Michael Lewis in fourth spot, priced at £15.99, a book that that has an r.r.p. of £25, but which can be bought in print from Amazon.co.uk for £12.50, or at $11.74 (£8) via Kindle. The title which is third in the iBookstore - 59 Seconds by Richard Wiseman (Pan Macmillan) - is priced at £8.99, the full list price. But it costs $5.91 (£4) to download on Kindle, or £3.59 as a paperback from Amazon.co.uk, or £4.59 from Waterstones.com.
James Long, Pan Macmillan's editorial director for digital, declined to comment on the specifics regarding Amazon. However, he confirmed the company was now trading with Apple via the agency model.
"The strategy we have followed [with Apple] is that we price the front list at approximately 30% off the price of the print edition, and the backlist at full r.r.p," he said.
"That's our strategy as it stands, although as the market develops I'm sure there will be changes... We want to see how the market develops, and we are interested in sales on a daily basis."
Long declined to give sales figures thus far, or compare them relative to other e-book sales, although he said he was "very pleased" to be outselling titles with greater discounts. "We've not seen a full month yet, this is just the launch period, so that number does not have a complete context," he said. Long also stressed Pan Macmillan in the UK was autonomous from the US company.
Reports have suggested that Apple's agency model means that though publishers set the price of digital books they are not allowed to sell them more cheaply anywhere than the price they are available via the iBookstore, a clause known as the "most favoured nation". However, questions have been raised over the legality of this model in the UK.