Archive for the ‘iBooks’ Category

DOJ Antitrust Action Against Apple to Harm Small Business App Developer Publishers

Wednesday, April 11th, 2012

iBooks

Many of our small business members are concerned by today’s Department of Justice antitrust action against Apple and book publishers for purported e-book price fixing. While it is curious that the government would consider an antitrust case against a competitor with a market share far below dominance, it is also alarming that the actions it takes may have a profoundly negative impact on smaller retailers.

The wrong result from DOJ action could harm small businesses on the iTunes store significantly. The convergence of app makers and publishers at iTunes and the App Store has allowed for the distribution of innovative interactive content that can only succeed when its creators have flexibility in choosing how to bring their works to market. Unfortunately, the Justice Department’s latest step reprises the old story of the small developer/publisher becoming the collateral damage in the battle of the giants. Author Scott Turow hit the nail on the head when he said, “our government may be on the verge of killing real competition in order to save the appearance of competition.”

Posted in Apps, Competition, Tech Regulation, iBooks | No Comments »

Apple’s Textbook Business Model

Friday, January 20th, 2012

iBooks Author

On Thursday Apple introduced iBook Author, a new authoring tool that makes creating interactive iBooks as easy as putting together a Keynote presentation. By making it easy to bring content to life, Apple hopes to revolutionize learning and revitalize the market for textbooks in education.

The business model that Apple has chosen for iBook Author is to give the product away for free and make money when books created using iBook Author are sold in the iBooks Store. As part of the license agreement, you can give away books that were created using iBook Author for free, but if you sell them you have to use Apple’s iBook Store.

This has sparked a number of strong reactions. ZDNet’s Ed Bott wrote an article titled “Apple’s mind-bogglingly greedy and evil license agreement” and Daring Fireball’s John Gruber, usually the voice of cool and common sense, described the practice as “Apple at its worst“.

This manufactured controversy is grossly inappropriate. iBook Author is nothing more than an authoring tool that produces a document in an open file format. Apple is giving away a free tool to support its own platform. There are plenty of other ways to create electronic text books. Companies like Adobe will surely step in and offer fantastic authoring tools that support a multitude of file formats and electronic bookstores. Much ado about nothing.

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