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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.
Jobs most certainly sent the emails but we don't know who else was involved in drafting, wording, the tone, or strategy.
Its not a negotiation if one of the parts has no intentions of changing his position. This was a sale.
Although I appreciate the article, this is not a pinnacle for negotiation. I'd like to see a better case of conflicting demands and creative/collaborative solutions.
You can see that the decisions were made too quickly and for the impending announcement.
I was in a position of negotiation yesterday. Nothing anywhere near as grand as this, and i wonder if creating the perception that my position was stronger would have helped, or if it had to be ridiculously obvious to the other party.
Do publishers and authors not looks at statistics? I'm sorry but ebooks aren't even close to the same value as print books. I have an idea of the production costs involved. Not to mention that with ebooks you're saving trees and reaching larger audiences. If the mobile app market shows us anything it's that micro-transactions are the way to go. Either sell your books for That or an unlimited book (library) subscripti…
Sentimental value of looking at the shelve and resale/lending are the only advantages physical books have. When I'm near Foyle's in London I buy any signed edition of authors I like, but other than that it's Kindle + Safari Online for me.
The author's work is the valuable part. I wouldn't support lowering the prices anymore for any established authors.
However the eBook market is a great opportunity for new artists -- take the "Hunger Games".
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.
Then he probably sprinkles in some of his own language and gets to it. Shablamo, profit.
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…
To be fair, Apple didn't have much to lose if the deal didn't go through. So I can see why the "take it or leave it" strategy works in this case. It would be interesting to see how Jobs negotiated in a case where the other party had the upper hand.
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.
If Jobs operates even peripherally like a typical executive -- or even the partner of a consulting firm -- he has both an extremely razor-sharp assistant working on copy for emails like this AND a bevy of beach-combing young professionals culling research to build this sort of correspondence. Then he probably sprinkles in some of his own language and gets to it. Shablamo, profit.
I guess it is the capitalist in me that doesn't really get what Apple was doing wrong by trying to set higher eBook prices with the major publishers.