Dingbats Ahoy!
"The point is, if Apple dis-agrees with your content, it won't sell it."
This is no different to Walmart or any other bricks'n'mortar store refusing to sell a CD that has an (in their opinion) offensive cover or content.
Apple tells authors: All your books iBook files are belong to us
In a legal rewrite pushed out Friday, Apple has made its iBooks publishing agreement sound slightly less evil by clarifying just what you can do with the content you create on its iBook Author software. Yes, all iBooks are locked to the iBook store but you can export those files as PDFs. As The Reg pointed out at the time of …
-
-
-
Monday 6th February 2012 15:27 GMT Paul Smith
"includes..."
I seem to read clause (ii) differently to other commentators :
if a) "...the work is provided for a fee..."
and b) "... and includes files in the .ibooks format ..."
then c) "...may only be distributed through Apple"
This would appear to mean that if an ibook format version of my work exists, then I can not sell it by any other means - even if apple refuse to sell it.
-
Monday 6th February 2012 15:32 GMT Sean Timarco Baggaley
You do know that the .iBook format is proprietary, right?
The only device that can even read an iBook file is the iPad, using iBooks v2.
Apple are just arse-covering here: they're giving away an application that lets you create content for their device. If someone writes an iBook-compatible reader for, say, Android, then, suddenly, Apple's free app can also be used to produce content for a rival platform.
This makes Apple lawyers angry, and you wouldn't like them when they're angry.
-
-
Monday 6th February 2012 15:27 GMT Jason Hindle
I'm fine with this
You get free access to an extremely well subscribed distribution network and Apple takes its cut if you want to make a sale. If you don't like that, find another equally well subscribed, equally usable, equally free on the point of publishing distribution network. It will be interesting to see how Apple works out which books are not suitable though.
-
Wednesday 8th February 2012 20:53 GMT Michael Wojcik
Apple's sold, what, 55 million iPads? (That's based on estimates of just under 15M for 2010 and around 40M for 2011, according to supposedly-reputable stories I found online.) I wouldn't call that "an extremely well subscribed distribution network" - it's not peanuts, but it's not "extremely" anything either. It doesn't matter how many people have iTunes accounts if the only ones who can read your iBook are those iPad owners.
Of course, it's hard to say how it compares to the other dominant e-book market, the Kindle, because Amazon won't release Kindle sales figures. (It's somewhere in the tens of millions, so perhaps roughly equivalent to the iPad.) And while you can get Kindle-format readers for other platforms, I'm assuming that's a niche. On the other hand, Kindle's a proven market, with 14 authors who've passed the one million e-book sales on the platform. iBook might well see the same sort of success, but it might not.
-
-
Monday 6th February 2012 15:36 GMT Eddie Edwards
EULAs are enforceable now, are they?
I don't see any reason I can't write a book and distribute it in iBook format on any channel I please. I'm not going to read the EULA, and when I click OK it's so I can run the software, not because I agree to any conditions which I haven't read anyway.
If Apple choose to give away iBooks Author that's up to them, but people own content they make, owing to the Berne Convention etc., and a click-through EULA on some free software is not going to trump those long-standing legal principles in any sane court of law.
IMHO, IANAL, and so on and so forth.
-
Monday 6th February 2012 15:43 GMT Anonymous Coward
"Apple's right not to distribute your work if it doesn't like it"
Is this any different to a high street shop or even Amazon? Do Amazon have a policy that they'll agree to distribute to their kindle ANY book, no matter what the topic or content? I'm pretty sure there are some topics and taboos that they would draw the line at.
Apple are providing you access to a massive potential audience. Seems perfectly reasonable to me that they'd have a clause in there to prevent some spanner from trying to sell a book that crosses child pr0n with the holocaust, or something. When you're giving everyone in the world the chance to publish whatever they want, you're just asking for trouble if you're not going to give yourself some way of controlling what goes on the shelves of your store.
-
Monday 6th February 2012 15:50 GMT Steve the Cynic
You think...
So, you think that because you deliberately didn't read the EULA, then clicked OK indicating that you had read and understood it, and agreed to it, it doesn't apply to you?
(It may well not apply, but any law on the applicability of clickware EULAs would not centre on the question of whether you read them or not. It would centre on whether clicking OK is sufficient to create a binding agreement. But if it doesn't, you are, by clear implication, not allowed to use the software, because your right to use it is based on the existence of a binding agreement. If, on the other hand, the law comes down in favour of the clickware EULA being binding, then your non-reading doesn't enter into it one way or another, just as it doesn't when you sign a paper contract in the real world.)
I, too, am not a lawyer, but I've read up a bit on b2b and b2c contract law, and all I can say is my God, what a mess.
FAIL for you, sorry.
-
Monday 6th February 2012 15:55 GMT Graham Wilson
There's no doubt about it, Steve Jobs truly was the Pied Piper.
It's sans Apple here, and I'm forever grateful that I've nothing to do with iTunes, iBooks, iPhone or 'i'-anything.
It's this highly proprietary side of the Internet that truly sucks big time (and it's antithetical to the Internet's founding principles).
I've still difficulty comprehending why anyone would really want to use Apple's services at all when he/she has so very little control over them.
There's no doubt about it, Steve Jobs truly was the Pied Piper.
-
Monday 6th February 2012 16:06 GMT jai
Where's the lack of control? i can write a book, publish it in iBooksAuthor and sell it via iBookstore, if i wish, so that people with iPads can read it.
OR I can also produce a .pdf version and sell that myself via whatever means are available (Amazon, eBay, personal website, etc etc). I could even use that pdf to pitch the book to a traditional publisher to get it printed as traditional books.
As a user, I can purchase a book via the iBookstore if i wish. Or i can go and hunt down the pdf, load that onto my iPad, and still read the same content. Or I can purchase/acquire a Kindle format .mobi file, cover that to .epub, and still read it on my iPad.
So as an iPad user, i have freedom of choice on how i consume content. And as an author, i have freedom on how i choose to publish.
I don't see where this "lack of control" is that you harp on about?
-
-
Monday 6th February 2012 16:03 GMT Anonymous Coward
I guess there will soon be 3rd party converters
The EULA doesn't seem to prevent converting your iBook content into ePub, losing a few proprietary features on the way. That way you get to use a simple publishing tool, and still control where you publish your books.
Maybe there'll even be a Kindle format converter
-
Monday 6th February 2012 16:57 GMT Stevie
Bah!
If you don't like the terms, don't use the product.
Of course, terms subject to change without notice and all that.
And there are plenty of less expensive alternatives to writing (and distributing) your work, but they don't come to you just because you switch your computer on.
On the writing front I'd like to put in a plug for Scrivener, a nice little number that works fine on my Windows 7 laptop and cost the pocket-ripping amount of $40. You may need a word processor to leverage this baby for your purpose, and sadly it doesn't speak native OpenOffice but the good news is that OpenOffice can write Office 97 files and Scrivener understands *them*. If you are a budding screenwriter or stage author, it has a number of in-built extras to make your life particularly easy. You can try Scrivener yourself for free of course.
Not affiliated or in any way compensated for that plug, just impressed with the thing.
-
-
-
Monday 6th February 2012 21:15 GMT Anonymous Coward
I'm sorry that you don't understand
That's just my point though.
If the deal is so great, then what is the point of all this shit that Apple put into their terms and conditions? A great service and a great deal sells itself.
If I got into the supermarket to buy corn flakes, they don't say "You can only buy our corn flakes if you sign this piece of paper to agree never to buy corn flakes from anyone else every again."
I think that half the time we don't think clearly about the ludicrousness of what companies demand from us because we are so used to getting shafted by them.
And saying, the deal is great, so bend of and take it is quite the answer I was looking for.
-
Monday 6th February 2012 22:10 GMT Chad H.
Well Skellband
You also have to remember that the software to create the book, they're giving away that for free - to anyone who wants to use it. The only caveat is you can't use its full power to benefit a competitor.
It would be like a business letting you make free phone calls, only for you to turn around and use those to make deals for their competition.
is it really that objectionable that they give you something for free, on the caveat that you don't sting them with it.
-
-
-
Tuesday 7th February 2012 21:33 GMT dssf
Maybe it'll get up to 40%?
Suppose Apple and some well-heeled/cultivated scouts find a good crop of books, and rave about them in the Saturday Evening Post (if that still exists), Time, etc, extending serious cred to newbie authors. If that happens, Apple may decide it's time to bump it up to 40% so that 10% will go straight to the "culler"/"curators".
If that happens, and so long as the "curators" don't get tainted & drunk and lose their edge, it could be a win-win-win for Apple, the reviewers (assuming they are not Apple employees eliminated from the cut) and the budding/aspiring authors/artists.
If this works well, it could upset Amazon as well as the already ailing traditional publishers/clearing houses.
It increasingly becomes more and more astonishing that the aging paper publishers did NOT catch up to this point ages ago. Eventually, the paper publishing industry of school texts will be decimated, too, for constantly pushing $150 texts of 800 pages, 350 of which might be covered in and out of class, and which are cosmetically enhanced to coercer semester-on-semester repurchases and near-needless obsolescence.
-
-
Monday 6th February 2012 19:28 GMT johnnymotel
OK, here's a real life example...
My sister in law edits knitting and crochet books for other authors and publishers. But she has her own patterns that she has created and she is a gifted person in this area. She just never got around to writing her own books and going through a publisher.
I sent her the link for iBooks and she is over the moon, finally she has an easy route to self-publish without any of the hassle of middlemen. Plus she knows without a shred of doubt, she will get more in her pocket using iTunes, than using a publisher.
Does she care about Apple's EULA? No, she cares that she can put her creativity to work in her own name, in a very simple manner, reach a very wide audience and make some money off it....money she never had.
-
Monday 6th February 2012 21:25 GMT TheOtherHobbbes
Let's just remind ourselves
that if you write a book for a traditional publisher, they will typically keep at least *85% of their net income.*
That's for books that sell reasonably well.
If you're a midlist fiction author, you typically get to keep just 7% of the net income.
Oh - and if you have an agent, the agent will keep between 10% and 20% of any payment the publisher makes to you.
Some agent contracts stipulate that you must pay them 10-20% of *any* work you do, from any source, whether or not they made it happen for you.
And the really evil ones expect you to keep paying them that 10-20% even after they're no longer working for you.
So that's how author-friendly trad pub is.
Now - if you're lucky, existing publishers will pay you an advance. It might be a few thousand for first time novel, although it's usually a lot less in the UK.
If you have a name and a platform (as it's called - i.e. you have some kind of relevant professional or media profile) advances can range from 10k to 100k. The real heavy hitters get seven figures. (But there aren't many of those.)
So - d'ya feel lucky?
With Apple you can write a book and keep 70% of the income.
With trad publishing you can write a book and make something less than minimum wage on an hourly rate basis.
Since publishers are no longer doing PR for non-famous authors, the Apple deal really isn't so bad - especially given that it's a new market, it's going to get bigger, and now is the time to make yourself a new niche.
You'll probably be wasting your time, especially if you don't know how to do the PR thing.
But some people will do okay. A smaller number will do more than okay. And a handful of people will do very well indeed from this.
-
Tuesday 7th February 2012 21:16 GMT dssf
Let's not forget, though... (part 2 of 2)
(Apologies for the split... there's apparently a 2000 char limit)
At least with the iTunes Store, provided one is not stealing/plagiarizing, and assuming no one has stolen an author's drafts, a decent, budding author may get to establish him/herself without going through layers and lawyers for months or years and be beaten out by a 'similar" work in the pipeline which gets preferential treatment because 'first" author is chums or been in the pipeline too long to be shunted by a newcomer who has few chops.
I tend to rail and bash apple a hell of a lot, but, the more I think about it, the more I polish off my crap, I may be able to turn something of a turd into a gold pile. I just don't know that I want to have my digital world converted to all-apple. But, if my turd sells like gold, i certainly will bite my tongue and milk iBook Publisher thingy for all it is worth. If I can sell 1,000 copies of something at $500 each, and come out with $350,000, I'll take that route over a traditional publisher ANY day. On my own, though, I *might* hit 500 potential buyers of my material. Even selling at $150 each is still a win for me if I keep 70% of 500 copies for $52,500 gross, that is a win. Especially since what I may do can be repeated at least 5 or 6 times before it gets old.
This topic is closed for new posts.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
