3 ms·

If publishers choose to pay Apple 30% for "being there" then I guess it's worth 30%. They don't have to rationalize their fee (even though they try). They're no

If publishers choose to pay Apple 30% for "being there" then I guess it's worth 30%. They don't have to rationalize their fee (even though they try). They're not deceiving or coercing you. They're offering a deal in good faith -- take it or leave it.

donohoe 16y ago
Right, but they also have to charge that rate everywhere else. So if a subscription without Apple is $10 (an easy round number) its not matter of upping the rate to $15 so you can still get your $10 to pay for the content since you now have to also charge that $15 to Amazon users and other subscribers. That 1/3 price hike is pretty substantial to pass onto the reader, so it bites into the publishers margin instead. The rate remains at $10 or $12 so the publisher is getting much less that they'd like. With talk of paywalls/subscriptions on web sites of news orgs there is a lot of chatter about people not wanting to pay for news in the first place. So subscription sales aren't a sure thing when it comes to a revenue stream for a publisher and also now Apple wants 30% of that...
- extension 16y ago
  Are we asking if the deal is competitive or if it's fair? They are very different questions and most of what I'm reading in this thread seems to treat them as the same. Maybe Apple doesn't want big, low-margin publishers in the app store. Maybe they want to be the big publisher and they only want small time content that is worth many times what it cost to produce. As a developer, I don't like that the hottest new platform is a walled garden, but I can't say that Apple has ever even implied that the app store is anything else and they haven't twisted any arms or abused any monopolies to get where they are. They just played really well, went straight to the source (consumers), and now they have everyone else by the balls.

3 ms·

If publishers choose to pay Apple 30% for "being there" then I guess it's worth 30%. They don't have to rationalize their fee (even though they try). They're no

by extension 16y ago

donohoe 16y ago
Right, but they also have to charge that rate everywhere else. So if a subscription without Apple is $10 (an easy round number) its not matter of upping the rate to $15 so you can still get your $10 to pay for the content since you now have to also charge that $15 to Amazon users and other subscribers. That 1/3 price hike is pretty substantial to pass onto the reader, so it bites into the publishers margin instead. The rate remains at $10 or $12 so the publisher is getting much less that they'd like. With talk of paywalls/subscriptions on web sites of news orgs there is a lot of chatter about people not wanting to pay for news in the first place. So subscription sales aren't a sure thing when it comes to a revenue stream for a publisher and also now Apple wants 30% of that...
- extension 16y ago
  Are we asking if the deal is competitive or if it's fair? They are very different questions and most of what I'm reading in this thread seems to treat them as the same. Maybe Apple doesn't want big, low-margin publishers in the app store. Maybe they want to be the big publisher and they only want small time content that is worth many times what it cost to produce. As a developer, I don't like that the hottest new platform is a walled garden, but I can't say that Apple has ever even implied that the app store is anything else and they haven't twisted any arms or abused any monopolies to get where they are. They just played really well, went straight to the source (consumers), and now they have everyone else by the balls.