The point is that all of the players are acting in their self interest . Amazon didn't establish the ebook market through it's benevolence to folks on the forum, much as they would like to believe that. I sometimes marvel at people who believe that Amazon " should have " created an open Kindle or adopted ePub , because it's the " right format" as if Amazon were some sort of nonprofit organization dedicated to achieving the dreams of technogeeks. What's the business case for that?
In the same way, there really was no business case for Apple allowing booksellers to sell millions of dollars worth of books free of cost on their platform. After all, let's face it, none of those retailers allow Apple or any other retailer to sell on their platforms. Apple was always likely to try to get a cut of that revenue that was coming from the market they created. When that didn't work, they settled for giving their bookstore an advantage. In the end, that was the least inconvenient outcome. We will have to settle for that, but hey, it could have been worse.
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