Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
Amazon and B&N have enough visibility and mindshare their sales won't suffer by relying on web-based sales to serve their iOS customers. Other ebookstores, though...
A big loser in all this is Adobe since the generic ebookstores that are the most exposed to foreclosure are all based on ADEPT epub. Considering Apple and Adobe are already at odds over other issues Adobe can't be happy to see their "standard" undercut like this.
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Other readers (Bluefire) have gotten around this by not selling books in-app but redirecting to web sites for sales (Bluefire uses affiliate codes with third-party bookstores). iFlow's business model was probably not the best idea in the first place, implementing their own book store. They would've been better off going the same route as Bluefire, implementing ADEPT and affiliating themselves with multiple book sellers. That way they're not selling books in-app and thus don't run afoul of Apple's 30% royalty requirement.
I mentioned in a thread on the Apple forum here, but while I was never a fan of iFlow's reader, it seems like they gave up on this too easily. There are plenty of other options, like the previously-mentioned web-based bookstore idea, removing in-app book purchasing, adding ads, going premium for the app, porting to other platforms, etc. I'm sad to see them go as every ereader loss weakens the ecosystem, but at the same time I'm glad I was never a customer of theirs if they give up this easily.