Steve Jobs emails that show how to win a negotiation

Post by hkmurakami » Thu, May 23, 2013, 12:23 AM UTC

ojiikun wrote: post #107

seldo wrote: post #7

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…

All I took away from this was that AAPL wanted to make about $0, AMZN wanted to make about -$3, and in both cases the author makes about $3, meaning that of the $13 wholesale, the publisher is getting a 75% cut of the sale. I cannot fathom that the publisher performs any function possibly worth this much money. How, since we no longer have to ship dead trees, have we not evolved a system that gives authors 75% of the…

Post by robryan » Thu, May 23, 2013, 12:27 AM UTC

jplmelanson wrote: post #105

jonny_eh wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It all depends on either party's willingness to walk away. For Apple, books was just one small avenue for potential revenue, for the publishers it's their whole business. If Apple was missing a publisher on iBooks, they'd hardly care. If a book publisher can't get their authors' books on an iPad, those authors might go elsewhere.

> If Apple was missing a publisher on iBooks, they'd hardly care With 4 out of 6 major publisher in, maybe, but that would have been another game with only 1 or 2 in.

Post by meepmorp » Thu, May 23, 2013, 12:50 AM UTC

skeletonjelly wrote: post #109

meepmorp wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Kindles are clearly a superior device for reading [novels and similar material] than iPads. For you perhaps; I prefer reading on an iPad. It doesn't bother my eyes, and it doesn't make it difficult to sleep. Maybe the fact that I don't typically read outside makes some difference here.

Still, the difference is staggeringly: staring at a lightbulb vs a surface.

Post by meepmorp » Thu, May 23, 2013, 12:56 AM UTC

mehwoot wrote: post #114

meepmorp wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That would be interesting to witness. Apple's second trial their criminal behavior over eBooks would be a hoot. What criminal behavior would there be in this instance? It's their platform and they're not convicted monopolists, so they can set their pricing however they like. If Amazon doesn't like it, they can take their ball and go home (and likely get Apple to cave, cause people seem to prefer Kindle to iBooks).…

> It's their platform and they're not convicted monopolists, so they can set their pricing however they like. I can't speak for countries I don't live in (like the US), but where I live, this isn't actually the case. You'd think it would be, but it isn't.

Post by robotresearcher » Thu, May 23, 2013, 1:00 AM UTC

hkmurakami wrote: post #111

ojiikun wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All I took away from this was that AAPL wanted to make about $0, AMZN wanted to make about -$3, and in both cases the author makes about $3, meaning that of the $13 wholesale, the publisher is getting a 75% cut of the sale. I cannot fathom that the publisher performs any function possibly worth this much money. How, since we no longer have to ship dead trees, have we not evolved a system that gives authors 75% of the…

AAPL makes $3~4. Publishers are who "make" the writers in the first place (unfortunately) by shouldering the distribution, marketing, etc. Without them (or without the author being e-famous(tm) already), an author can't hope to sustain himself through writing. Maybe things would change if we were more willing to "pay" for discovering content creators through our own time investment, but this is doubtful.