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No, a payment processor is exactly what they are in this case. Consider what Apple is attempting to do to Amazon's Kindle service: users can purchase Kindle ebo

by jaaron 16y ago

No, a payment processor is exactly what they are in this case. Consider what Apple is attempting to do to Amazon's Kindle service: users can purchase Kindle ebooks directly in-app but Apple takes a 30% cut of the payment. Amazon still hosts and provides the content, all Apple does is act like a payment processor like Visa or Paypal. Clearly Apple wants to shove out competition to it's own iBooks, iTunes and movie services.

zach 16y ago
And yet there seem to be a lot of books as apps on the App Store considering there's this 30% cut. What kind of inside track should Amazon have on the poor shlubs who sell their books as apps?
- potatolicious 16y ago
  The poor schlubs who sell their books as apps haven't cut out the middleman. With Kindle (or iBooks), the author simply uploads his/her work in a commonly exchanged format. Everything else is handled - distribution, payment, formatting, device compatibility. The works. As an author who wants to publish their book as a discrete app, suddenly you're engaging with a different middleman - the inevitable app vendor. The vast majority of book authors aren't coders and wouldn't know how to publish an app to save their lives, much less on multiple platforms (Android, iOS, webOS, WP7, along with their phone and tablet variants). Inevitably they will buy this solution (which, in essence, is largely of the same nature as Amazon/Apple) from someone else. And what will we, as consumers, have seen from this situation? More confusion and a worse experience overall, as every single little piece of content now floods the app store, obliterating any sense of discoverability while making the UX much, much worse (downloading a discrete app, along with all of its code and media, every time you want to read a book?!)
  - zach 16y ago
    Bookbaby makes it pretty easy, but I don't see how that even matters. You're just arguing that there should be more middlemen, sub-platform-providers who get a special deal with Apple compared to original app authors. We can all foresee what happens when providing a hammer factory is favored over providing a hammer. It's not good UX or good for consumers.

by jaaron 16y ago

zach 16y ago

And yet there seem to be a lot of books as apps on the App Store considering there's this 30% cut. What kind of inside track should Amazon have on the poor shlubs who sell their books as apps?

potatolicious 16y ago
The poor schlubs who sell their books as apps haven't cut out the middleman. With Kindle (or iBooks), the author simply uploads his/her work in a commonly exchanged format. Everything else is handled - distribution, payment, formatting, device compatibility. The works. As an author who wants to publish their book as a discrete app, suddenly you're engaging with a different middleman - the inevitable app vendor. The vast majority of book authors aren't coders and wouldn't know how to publish an app to save their lives, much less on multiple platforms (Android, iOS, webOS, WP7, along with their phone and tablet variants). Inevitably they will buy this solution (which, in essence, is largely of the same nature as Amazon/Apple) from someone else. And what will we, as consumers, have seen from this situation? More confusion and a worse experience overall, as every single little piece of content now floods the app store, obliterating any sense of discoverability while making the UX much, much worse (downloading a discrete app, along with all of its code and media, every time you want to read a book?!)
- zach 16y ago
  Bookbaby makes it pretty easy, but I don't see how that even matters. You're just arguing that there should be more middlemen, sub-platform-providers who get a special deal with Apple compared to original app authors. We can all foresee what happens when providing a hammer factory is favored over providing a hammer. It's not good UX or good for consumers.