At Gizmodo, Matt Buchanan looks at Apple’s recent behavior. He discusses Apple’s decision to require in-app purchase parity, and the fact that it would wipe out the entire profit margin of booksellers such as Amazon. And he wonders what the implications might be for potential censorship of books and magazines.
Apple did, after all, pull a lot of “un-family-friendly” apps and appbooks from its store a while back. But on the other hand, it also sells music with explicit lyrics in the iTunes store.
Under the new system, Apple may well treat published differently and more leniently—basically hands off—but it’s worth asking what it would take now for Apple to pull a book or a magazine out of the iBooks or App Store? More or less than what it took for Amazon to pull The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover’s Code of Conduct from Kindle? Amazon erred on the side of selling the book and reconsidering versus banning and reconsidering. I don’t think Apple would err on the same side.
Of course, so far Apple’s iBooks store is still running considerably behind Amazon’s in terms of book sales—not too surprising given that Amazon has the advantage of multiple platforms while Apple is limited to its own. So any censorship on Apple’s part would have less impact than anything Amazon could do.
Apple’s new in-app purchase stance is very worrying from the point of view of someone who enjoys reading e-books on Apple devices. It seems pretty clear that, unless something changes, Apple is either going to wipe out the e-book companies’ profit margins or else push them off its platform. Until now, the wide availability of different e-book vendors’ stores was considered a big selling point of the platform for e-book lovers; Apple was content to leave the low-margin e-book biz alone since it acted as an inducement to buy its high-margin devices.
But apparently Apple is looking ahead to the point where the market is saturated and those low publishing margins become the only margin in town. Or perhaps Apple thinks it can have its cake and eat it too. I wonder what the final results of these decisions is going to be?
Anile I would prefer that Apple leave other ebook stores alone, as reader, I can’t really say that this was unexpected.
The question that pops to mind however, when I see such a big deal being made of this is whether we can by a book from Apple’s iBookstore or from Barnes & Noble on a Kindle. You can’t. You simply don’t have the choice. It might be that Apple will push other readers off of the iPad. It will be a pity, and I hope it won’t come to that.
An interesting observation… Most eBooks in my iPad’s iBooks app were not purchased from Apple. Come to think of it, none of them were. I’ve got a few dozen and they were mostly purchased from independent ebookstores and then just loaded onto iBooks. Previously I would read these titles on Stanza.
I can’t see this working well for Apple. Since they don’t have as many books available as the other stores, they will lose avid readers.
If they do get a bigger catalog – like Amazon- and the prices are good, then it might make a difference.
argh! I got an iPad for the purpose of having a device that I could read multiple formats on. i.e. Kindle books. I really hate the iBook store and the format limits me to only my iPad for reading. I guess I will just have to ditch the iPad and read everything on my little DroidX. It really sucks that devices are controlling what you put on them and how you read them. I just got my first Macbook Air… I am thinking I might have made a mistake!
Well I am happy with my iPad. I don’t see the basis for most of the ridiculous fuss here.
On censorship – I have three massive bookstores in my city of about 1.8 million people. They only stock what they chose to stock and don’t stock LOTS of books that are sexual, pornographic, violent or whatever. That is THEIR choice. If Amazon and Apple chose to do the same that it their prerogative, there are plenty of other places to buy them. That is what the free market is about.
I am not completely happy with what appears to be the strategy Apple is following regarding in app purchases. But it is grossly premature to over react to a situation that is in progress and uncertain – and saying ‘I am worried about …’ over and over, and over again doesn’t help anyone imho, not the customer or the reader or the publisher or the author. I think Apple have the right to say to companies that use their device, ‘you have to give us a cut for using our device to sell your product’. After all Amazon don’t let ANYone else sell product on their device !
No one buys an iPad for eBooks. So this will have zero affect on iPad purchases. This is probably the reason why Apple have not been taking this topic on board properly, which is unfortunate. I didn’t either. But I am 100% certain it will be sorted out this year, like a number of issues relating to the Kindle. It is all in flux and expecting it not to be is unrealistic.