Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Steve Jobs emails that show how to win a negotiation

qz.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 176 posts

Re: Steve Jobs emails that show how to win a negotiation

#91

Post by Steko »

jonknee wrote: post #42

> Analysts estimate that Amazon has sold more than one million Kindles in 18+ months (Amazon has never said). We will sell more of our new devices than all of the Kindles ever sold during the first few weeks they are on sale. If you stick with just Amazon, Sony, etc., you will likely be sitting on the sidelines of the mainstream ebook revolution. Hindsight is a funny thing. Amazon's eBook/Kindle business is continuin…

"In Steve's world, Apple's raising the price by 30% and then taking 30% is a benefit to the customer and not Apple"

The price was already $12.99. The fact that Amazon was willing to eat a large amount of that price on a tiny volume of ebooks in the short term doesn't mean that would have favored consumers in the long term. Today, with agency pricing, the average price of an ebook is around $8. Hasn't that benefited consumers?

Re: Steve Jobs emails that show how to win a negotiation

#92

Post by joering2 »

anonymous wrote: post #37

This part from Jobs's letter sounded strange to me: 3. Hold back your books from Amazon. Without a way for customers to buy your ebooks, they will steal them. This will be the start of piracy and once started there will be no stopping it. Publishers must realise that all books are already available in pirated variants, right? Their worst nightmare - everybody being able to download any book without paying them, is al…

His statement abused me. Of course there will be people stealing stuff, but thats _minority_. Putting everyone in the same cart (either you with us, or you will see everyone stealing your stuff) matches Jobs overall ego.

Re: Steve Jobs emails that show how to win a negotiation

#94

Post by snowwrestler »

notimetorelax wrote: post #58
doctorpangloss wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hindsight is a funny thing. Amazon's eBook/Kindle business is continuing to soar while Apple doesn't even mention iBooks anymore. That's true, but for a few idiosyncratic reasons, if anything. The Kindle app is available for the iPad, and for a period of time an iPad user could buy the book directly in the app. If Apple wanted to, it could coerce Amazon to pay 30%, regardless of where the books are sold. I wouldn't…

> I suspect Amazon makes most of its money off iPad users Just wondering, why do you think that?

Because it's easy to order all sorts of things off Amazon on an iPad, not just books. That's why Amazon pushes the Kindle Fire so hard now, but they have a long way to go to catch up to the iPad installed base.

Re: Steve Jobs emails that show how to win a negotiation

#95

Post by not_that_noob »

One thing not mentioned here - if the iPad launched without HC titles, and the iPad became a hit (which was unclear at the time of this negotiation), then customers would have an incentive to put pirated HC content onto the device. A few sophisticated customers would have figured it out, and then that knowledge would have spread. Even if Murdoch later succeeded in getting pricing flexibility from Apple at a subsequent date, it would be a pyrrhic victory, as many customers would have been trained on how to do it for free.

So HC had a lot to lose. And Steve knew it - all he had to do was to let Murdoch know that he Steve knew.

It's good to have a good hand.

Re: Steve Jobs emails that show how to win a negotiation

#97

Post by mhaymo »

not_that_noob wrote: post #95

One thing not mentioned here - if the iPad launched without HC titles, and the iPad became a hit (which was unclear at the time of this negotiation), then customers would have an incentive to put pirated HC content onto the device. A few sophisticated customers would have figured it out, and then that knowledge would have spread. Even if Murdoch later succeeded in getting pricing flexibility from Apple at a subsequen…

This was mentioned. In Jobs' last email, this was the 3rd option he saw for HC:

> 3. Hold back your books from Amazon. Without a way for customers to buy your ebooks, they will steal them. This will be the start of piracy and once started there will be no stopping it. Trust me, I’ve seen this happen with my own eyes.

Re: Steve Jobs emails that show how to win a negotiation

#99

Post by microtherion »

greyboy wrote: post #21
larrys wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jobs most certainly sent the emails but we don't know who else was involved in drafting, wording, the tone, or strategy.

I agree - that didn't seem like the Jobs-esque writing I'm used to.

“they won’t be sad” sounded like quintessential Jobs.

Re: Steve Jobs emails that show how to win a negotiation

#100

Post by leephillips »

Jobs had contempt for the whole idea of trying to sell books in any form and thought, wrongly, that there was no future business there, until Amazon proved him wrong.

"Today he [Jobs] had a wide range of observations on the industry, including the Amazon Kindle book reader, which he said would go nowhere largely because Americans have stopped reading." [0]

'“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he [Jobs] said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”' [1]

Note the conspicuous lack of interest in using Apple's power to promote books and reading.

  [0]http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/the-passion-of-steve-jobs/index.html

  [1] http://mssv.net/2008/12/28/the-long-decline-of-reading/
Post reply on HN