Re: Omitted Truth
>>>"But as a long time "Apple skeptic" I think they have very cleverly.." lied and cheated and colluded with publishers to fix the price of eBooks.
Errr...no they haven't. Apple does not "fix the price" of eBooks. As an author you can choose to give your book away for free (see the example I gave - EO Wilson "Life on Earth"). Or to charge anything you like up to $15.
Oh - perhaps you mean they fix the maximum price of eBooks at $15?
Gosh - as a consumer I would think that's a good thing.
Since you're obviously a fellow Apple-hater who has glanced at news headlines without reading the story, you may be referring to the exclusivity clause in the iBook Author publishing agreement. This is as follows:
- You get to use the authoring environment free of charge. This authoring environment is way better than anything that exists in the PC/Linux/Android world. The resulting iBooks are so slick that there is no equivalent technology on the horizon for an Android tablet (I wish there were).
- If you choose to give away your book for free then you can distribute it however you like (ie. not through the IBook Store).
- If you choose to give your book away for free then you can use the facilities of the iBook store, and Apple will not charge you a dime for doing that. It would cost you a fortune to market a free iBook in anything like the same way if you tried to do it yourself.
- If you choose to charge for your book you must distribute it through the iBook store - you are not allowed to use other distribution mechanisms. This is the point that many people jump on - but that's because they don't understand the publishing world. When you sign any publishing contract you are bound to that publisher exclusively (for that book), unless they release you. Apple is not doing anything different or sneaky here. In fact they only take 30% of your book cost, which is less than half of the normal cut. The author ends up with far more of the final sales price using Apple's mechanism.
Anyway - Apple doesn't need me to defend it - they're doing rather nicely with their hundred billion dollar cash pile. I'm sure they do a lot of things that annoy people, but the iBook agreement is not a lie (or "Omitted Truth"), and is actually a great deal for the authors.
Cheers,
SPuD