11–20 of 176 posts
So here we are, Apple has sold a bazillion iPads, and yet Amazon dominates ebooks. And there's absolutely no threat on the horizon coming from Apple in the ebooks market.
On the softer side of things, the language choice really shows the positions of power, the yielding tone of HC, contrasted with the very unyielding Apple position.
This was fascinating. Perhaps what's most interesting is how real Jobs seems. I mean, these emails read like some of the ones that I've sent in negotiations. With all the hoopla around him, it's easy to forget sometimes that Jobs was just a normal guy.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/23/3906374/email-exhibits-in-...
(sorry, couldn't find original documents)
A little OT from the actual content, but I have to say, this is an excellent example of web storytelling format, much more illuminating than the usual journalistic method of "here's some selective quotes, if you want more, here's a dump of emails for you to read in Acrobat Reader." And just as importantly, it's simple to implement: blockquotes, image tags, and subheads
Agree. Although I think the titles are prejudicial "Jobs goes in for the kill" in terms of telling someone the conclusion they should be drawing like the Elton John song Candle in the Wind "all the press had to say is that Marilyn was found in the nude". The paragraph commentary of course is a version of this as well (color) but I don't see it as bad since there are more words there.
And thanks, Dan. Much love to DocumentCloud for making the OCR of those PDFs super easy.
>Throw in with Apple and see if we can all make a go of this to create a real mainstream ebooks market at $12.99 and $14.99.
Basically Jobs is saying "Hey, we can be in this together. Let's just give it a try." - which is rather humanizing in a way, and masks the negotiation as a soft sell.
My two big takeaways from this are: 1. Amazon sells every Kindle ebook at a loss of $3 -- they pay $13 wholesale and sell it for $9.99. I thought this was a typo, but then Jobs repeated the figure (though he said $12.50). It was my impression that Amazon also sells the Kindle itself at near-cost, so does that mean that Amazon's entire ebook business has been running at a loss the whole time? 2. Jobs certainly did win…
My two big takeaways from this are: 1. Amazon sells every Kindle ebook at a loss of $3 -- they pay $13 wholesale and sell it for $9.99. I thought this was a typo, but then Jobs repeated the figure (though he said $12.50). It was my impression that Amazon also sells the Kindle itself at near-cost, so does that mean that Amazon's entire ebook business has been running at a loss the whole time? 2. Jobs certainly did win…
My two big takeaways from this are: 1. Amazon sells every Kindle ebook at a loss of $3 -- they pay $13 wholesale and sell it for $9.99. I thought this was a typo, but then Jobs repeated the figure (though he said $12.50). It was my impression that Amazon also sells the Kindle itself at near-cost, so does that mean that Amazon's entire ebook business has been running at a loss the whole time? 2. Jobs certainly did win…
That's in the US. Worldwide Apple is estimated to have around 24%. Not great but not too bad either.