My point is that for a business to work the value you add must be in some way proportional to the money you make - if it's not you're going to be vulnerable and

My point is that for a business to work the value you add must be in some way proportional to the money you make - if it's not you're going to be vulnerable and that's what happened here. I don't care about efficiency as a consumer but I recognise that if a business is making a transaction less efficient while adding little actual benefit that's likely (not certainly but likely) to be a problem for them. In essence the iFlow USP seems to be their reader app - everything else was being done by someone else either the same or better. How is that seriously going to a warrant 30% cut (which is what they were getting from the publishers) in the face of greater choice and likely better prices from Amazon and Apple? Selling books from large scale conventional publishers is a bulk market right now and if you can't answer the question "how do I compete with Amazon?" you're in trouble and "a nice reader app" simply isn't a good answer.