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iBookstore rejects Holly Lisle's writing course because she mentions Amazon

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Re: iBookstore rejects Holly Lisle's writing course because she mentions Amazon

#91

Post by grey-area »

ansgri wrote: post #59
rrbrambley wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's different because via Apple's model, you are holding the bookstore in your hands. There isn't an option to go to a different bookstore down the street, or order a book from a website that will send it to you in the mail. I'm thinking about the "ideal" (to Apple) world in which schools just expect content to be consumed this way (text books are a huge and important market), and it's disgusting. And yes, you are r…

I fail to see how there's no option to go to a different bookstore: can't you order the book from Amazon from the same iPad?

Only by going through the web browser, which apple can't now shut down without alienating too many users. If they thought they could get away with it, they would.

They have actively worked to disable any other store - for example, the kindle app cannot allow purchases or even link to the kindle store online, you have to manually search out links online instead, then download. It's absurd, not in the users' interests, and an abuse of Apple's power over the platform, but that's what Apple require.

Re: iBookstore rejects Holly Lisle's writing course because she mentions Amazon

#92

Post by Wilya »

rimantas wrote: post #88
georgemcbay wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This is where the line is drawn." Really? I mean, yes this is clearly terrible, but if you're surprised by Apple doing this then you haven't been paying much attention the past few years. I don't begrudge people who choose to use Apple products, they certainly have their charms, but I do get slightly annoyed when they are suddenly offended when Apple does something like this because post-App Store Apple pulls crap l…

> pulls crap like this all the time. Please tell. There are hundreds of thousands apps in App Store, but of course only those who got rejected matter, right?

How is the raw number of apps relevant ? There could be hundred of millions of harmless apps, that doesn't make it okay to block a few of them based on a dubious agenda.

Re: iBookstore rejects Holly Lisle's writing course because she mentions Amazon

#93

Post by summerdown2 »

I've seen a number of posts like this, and they always seem to gather responses like "It's their store, they can do what they like."

Perhaps it's simply my European bias speaking, but isn't this exactly why governments regulate markets? To prevent anticompetitive behaviour.

Re: iBookstore rejects Holly Lisle's writing course because she mentions Amazon

#94

Post by drieddust »

summerdown2 wrote: post #93

I've seen a number of posts like this, and they always seem to gather responses like "It's their store, they can do what they like." Perhaps it's simply my European bias speaking, but isn't this exactly why governments regulate markets? To prevent anticompetitive behaviour.

Who will regulate government and assure it is regulating fairly?

It is turtles all the way issue.

Re: iBookstore rejects Holly Lisle's writing course because she mentions Amazon

#95

Post by myko »

drieddust wrote: post #94
summerdown2 wrote: post #93

I've seen a number of posts like this, and they always seem to gather responses like "It's their store, they can do what they like." Perhaps it's simply my European bias speaking, but isn't this exactly why governments regulate markets? To prevent anticompetitive behaviour.

Who will regulate government and assure it is regulating fairly? It is turtles all the way issue.

It's the citizenry's job to regulate the government.

Re: iBookstore rejects Holly Lisle's writing course because she mentions Amazon

#96

Post by guscost »

If I ever finish a book, that book will be free speech, even if it also goes on sale. I don't want to hide ideas that I have pride in behind a paywall, and I would absolutely never trust a giant company like Apple to do that sort of thing on my behalf.

Re: iBookstore rejects Holly Lisle's writing course because she mentions Amazon

#97

Post by jasonlotito »

rickmb wrote: post #73

Something is off about this story. A brief glance in the iBookstore shows tons of books on Amazon and Amazon products, including books on how to sell your work via Amazon. We're talking entire books who's sole purpose is to promote or support the use of Amazon. Clearly Apple has no problem with those.

> Clearly Apple has no problem with those.

No. This makes the assumption Apple applies it's rules equally. It does not. Making the assumption that X got approved, so Y should get approved as well is a poor assumption.

Your best bet is to try and stick to the rules. And if you get denied, just resubmit and hope the next reviewer approves it.

Re: iBookstore rejects Holly Lisle's writing course because she mentions Amazon

#98

Post by jasonlotito »

brianwhitman wrote: post #13
Turing_Machine wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scroll down to "Previous Posts in this Discussion" and click the links. She goes through the whole thing, including the actual email from Apple.

Don't see any emails about the content block that she is referring to this post. I see emails about previous issues of her having links to Amazon in her ebooks. I am very curious about this, because I doubt just saying the word "Amazon" can really be an instant rejection -- and a quick search of the iBook store shows tons of books about Amazon itself, things like "How to Self Publish on the Amazon Kindle" et al.

Just an FYI, the existence of content in an Apple Store does not mean that the content is in anyway approved by Apple. Rather, it was approved by a single reviewer. You can submit something, get denied for a specific reason, and then resubmit and get a new reviewer, and get through without an issue.

Furthermore, the existence of content does not mean your content/app that has the same feature will be let in. Heck, during review, you can comment on the fact that other content/apps has or does exactly what you are doing, but that does not matter in any way.

Re: iBookstore rejects Holly Lisle's writing course because she mentions Amazon

#99

Post by jasonlotito »

philwelch wrote: post #84
runevault wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are those books from major publishers? She's going the self-pub route so Apple may not be willing to play games with multi-national publishing companies but will screw over indies. If not, I don't know, but having followed her news letter I would be more than a little surprised if she were fudging things here, it gives her no real benefit.

People will "fudge" things, as you say, for pride or sympathy just as much as they will for any concrete benefit.

Keep in mind, however, that Apple has a long history of doing this. This is not a new development. Indeed, it's the status quo.

Re: iBookstore rejects Holly Lisle's writing course because she mentions Amazon

#100

Post by nirvana »

jasonlotito wrote: post #97
rickmb wrote: post #73

Something is off about this story. A brief glance in the iBookstore shows tons of books on Amazon and Amazon products, including books on how to sell your work via Amazon. We're talking entire books who's sole purpose is to promote or support the use of Amazon. Clearly Apple has no problem with those.

> Clearly Apple has no problem with those. No. This makes the assumption Apple applies it's rules equally. It does not. Making the assumption that X got approved, so Y should get approved as well is a poor assumption. Your best bet is to try and stick to the rules. And if you get denied, just resubmit and hope the next reviewer approves it.

I've been thru Apple's review process enough times, and been rejected enough times to say that Apple does apply its rules equally.[1] Given the responses I've gotten back from the reviewers, it is clear that I've interacted with multiple reviewers, and I've never seen a deviation.

There is the occasional mistake, but the very telling thing about this article is she never tells us the specific rule that she broke. Hiding this information is important for making it look like Apple is arbitrary.

But the thing is, when you're rejected by Apple, they cite the specific rule.

Since there are lots of books about Amazon in the bookstore, and since there is no rule against publishing books about Amazon, this story does not add up.

[1] Every rejection resulted in me immediately getting pissed off, much like the original OP. But once I calmed down I realized either I misunderstood the rejection, and the fix was easy and the rejection was legitimate, or the rejection was due to me making an error that would produce a bad experience for the customer, sometimes because I misunderstood the guidelines, occasionally because I was being lazy without realizing it, and often just because of a mistake or bug.

Since Apple is uniform in the way they apply the rules, and the rules are not so specific as to cover specific bugs, it does take some interpretation to figure out what they are saying. If you don't take that step, its easy to fly off the handle and assume Apple is being arbitrary when they aren't. The reality is, it just means you didn't take the time to read what they wrote you and comprehend it.

Of course the rejections feel personal, and I won't tolerate a company that won't play by its own rules, but they've never been unfair to me, and other than a few mistakes that were corrected, I'm not aware of them being unfair to others.

However we get a lot of these kinds of stories where someone says one thing, but they never cite the specific rule, or are evasive, which indicates that they're just trying to get publicity and were really rejected for other reasons.

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