I think that Apple simply took a percentage of whatever the publishers wanted to sell the E-books for. Though US law might see it differently.


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I think the part about on insisting on a fixed retail price that couldn't be undercut by other retailers will be what get's them.

Yes that is different. If Apple and the publishers did not have that deal then it would not have been an issue.

The whole 'nowhere else cheaper than the apple shop' was widely publicised at the time and, while it's a contract term that can only been as being favourable to Apple over the customer, it's not of itself price fixing, or indeed illegal. Publishers were still free to set their own price and, if they wish, sell their ebooks on other platforms. Apple don't have anything like the market dominance in ebooks they have in online music sales to be able to dictate what publishers charge. In that market it's Amazon who are the four hundred pound gorilla.

What is, IIRC, is under investigation is that cartel of ebook publishers along with Apple conspired to keep the price of ebooks artificially high. Cartel price fixing is illegal. Needless to say the publishers and Apple deny any such thing happened. As I understand it, the evidence is in the 'interesting but not conclusive' bracket.

It's unusual for a judge to be making statements like that in a civil case though. It's almost as if he wants things to go on to an appeal trial so a few of his lawyer friends get to continue picking up immense paychecks.

I think Amazon are behind this trial as they are the biggest beneficiaries of an end to the Apple deal.


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The not cheaper anywhere else is the problem and also bad for customers. It is the same for software on the Apple platform.

If you sell through Apple, they take 30% of the purchase price, if you sell direct and only have a couple of percent for the card fee, you still can't sell it cheaper. That either means you have to rip off your customers, or you have to take a loss on the Apple store version.

Amazon have a similar "not cheaper elsewhere" policy for hosting on its marketplace.

I doubt that small software developers can get a low couple of percent fee for credit card payments, I suspect that many pay more than that. Also cost of delivery will be lower than hosting it yourself, so for developers there will be benefits of allowing Apple to sell it on your behalf. The biggest benefit is if you sold software through a retail chain that you could expect to have to give the retailer a 50% margin if not more, so you could be worse of that way. You might lose sales from multiple purchases when you consider Apples generous usage policy on different machines, but you will save more elsewhere with no advertising etc. It is all swings and roundabouts.

It depends how many copies you sell. Places like Squarespace offer unlimited bandwidth for $18 a month and a couple of percent on card transactions, as well as PayPal etc. If you have a Mac application selling for $10, you need 6 copies to cover your website costs at Apple's rates.

The question is, how discoverable is your website, compared to being buried in an App Store.

It costs me less than 3% to do a credit card transaction and I take a very small number of cc payments

The publishers all denied it at first and then accepted guilt and settled leaving Apple as the lone defendant. If Apple are found guilty it will be this and the amazing coincidence that they all raised prices to what Apple wanted at the same time. So the consumer lost out.

Iirc as apple are the only defendant now they will be liable for all the potential fines the publishers would have got if they hadn't made bargains, which could lead to very very substantial fines.

Yes that makes a huge difference. Since I find most of my software via mac magazines or mac update rss then if it is of interest to me and I discover it via these methods then they could make a sale. If you get an app picked as a app store staff favourite that can boost sales considerably.


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