6 ms·
The missing part is that Apple's maneuver was to effectively destroy the wholesale model in favor of an agency-model, and orchestrate all major publishers to ch
by rickdeckard 3y ago
The missing part is that Apple's maneuver was to effectively destroy the wholesale model in favor of an agency-model, and orchestrate all major publishers to charge more for ebooks just so they can earn their 30% commission from it.
Apple actively engaged as facilitator to help publishers raise prices on the whole market, for a 30% cut.
The result was that books previously available for $9.99 were suddenly sold for $12.99
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/how-steve-jobs-and-apple-fixed-ebook-prices-2013-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/how-steve-jobs-and-apple-fix...
- Fluorescence 3y agoTo highlight the untold level of harm Apple caused, I now realise this event stopped me reading for years. I loved ebooks and my reading went way up. They were cheaper than paperbacks and cheap enough that I was making curiosity and impulse purchases. The problem with digital sales is that unlike a bookshop, I could not browse and take a book from the shelf and start reading and get hooked. Once ebooks suddenly jumped in price and absurdly became more expensive than paperbacks, I was done, and didn't buy a book for years. You might try and argue this was irrational, but when I feel I am being scammed, my wallet stays in my pocket. I will indeed cut off my nose to spite an asshole.
- clankyclanker 3y agoAgreed, I only picked up reading again after finding Libby. (A short story about how cheating the user with exorbitant prices results in the exit of your audience.)
- marcus0x62 3y agoJobs was deeply cynical about ebooks, claiming early on that Kindle would fail because “people don’t read anymore”[0]. There’s some level of irony in the fact that the most successful product from the guy who wanted to build a “bicycle of the mind”[1] ended up being something more like the floating chairs in Wall E. 0 - https://www.wired.com/2008/01/steve-jobs-peop/ https://www.wired.com/2008/01/steve-jobs-peop/ 1 - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KmuP8gsgWb8 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KmuP8gsgWb8
- tekkk 3y agoI just looked and the last Song of Ice and Fire audiobook is 41€ in Apple Books. That is hilariously insane. I could perhaps pay that for all of them but for 1 — the others are basically the same price. That's 200€ for the set. There are weirdly other audiobook versions that cost only 29€ so I wonder what's the story here.
- cheschire 3y agoAnd many other folks will keep wondering what the story is for 41€! My bad puns aside, thank god for libraries. Otherwise these stories would be truly lost to the rich.
- yourusername 3y agoAudiobooks are just expensive in general. A song of Ice and Fire is $39 in Audible on android (well it's on sale now for $27). Sadly $20-40 is a fairly normal price for a audiobook.
- tekkk 3y agoYeah I think they are though artificially inflated by Amazon and co since why on earth can Audible sell them 8$ every month. Luckily there are a lot of old public domain books that you can listen to. Reading what Brandon Sanderson has to say about Audible to me was really revealing.
- troupo 3y agoWhat do you think it would cost? It's a professional reading/acting out a full book in a professional studio, with at least an editor, a production team, a corrector. And the market for audiobooks is still very minuscule.
- kevin_thibedeau 3y agoIf a band of professional musicians can put out an album with original music and multi-track mixing for $10, a pre-written book with a single voice performer and minimal production crew shouldn't cost multiples of that.