Blogger Eon Purcell notes that Apple may have created a big opportunity for publishers to sell directly to consumers, rather than through retailers:
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Apple did book big book publishers a favour some time ago when, by giving the big six leverage over Amazon (with the launch of their new ebook platform iBooks), they enabled those large publishers to enforce Agency pricing for ebooks.
That gave the big six the power to set prices and extract a higher share of the revenue from their sales then had been the case for print books. It was a major moment in the development of the ebook market and one that has received a lot of attention and, at least from within the industry, a lot of praise.
Apple’s more recent decision to enforce tough rules on in-App sales of content has been less popular. It has forced Amazon, Google, B&N and Kobo among others in publishing and other creative industries, to change their Apps to disable links to their ebook or content stores. Further it made it impossible for an ebook retailer to sell an ebook through the Apple in-App purchase system without giving 30% to Apple. Nasty eh?
The opportunity this created and that everyone missed , even me (till this weekend when it dawned on me), is for publishers to go direct to consumers and launch their own apps selling ebooks to readers.
Think about it, ebook retailers cannot make money from selling ebooks via Apple’s in-App sales because their margins simply won’t stretch that far. In the case of Agency titles they would be losing money, even on self-published works they might be losing money. However, a publisher, selling direct through their own app, or even a branded app in partnership with a number of other publishers in a given genre, could easily afford the 30% charge and even an administration charge too so long as it was kept low.
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Well, what do you think? Is this the wave of the future? Mike Shatzkin thinks maybe:
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Like Eoin, I have no idea whether any of the Big Six publishers are working on this idea or whether any of the major agents have suggested the possibility. But we’re talking about literally hundreds of smart people here, so it would be surprising if nobody’s exploring this possibility
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The book publishers could even do it in partnership with the Ibookstore, the way that magazine publishers are doing it in partnership with Apple's forthcoming Newsstand app. Come to think of it, its not totally crazy to think that Apple might not have had something like this in mind when they announced their much maligned policy change!