It would seem that digital publishing, the messiah many publishing houses have been pinning their hopes on to stem the losses paper magazines are making, is finally taking off.
Subsequent to launching The Daily with News Corp., Apple Inc. yesterday unveiled their digital publishing and content subscription scheme. As you would expect from Cupertino, the terms are fairly heavily slanted towards putting money in Apple’s pockets. Not only will content distributors selling products through iOS Apps have to use Apple’s in-app purchasing system, they will also have to give Apple their customary 30% – and the T’s & C’s state that the pricing on iOS must be equal to or less than it is offered elsewhere – essentially preventing sellers from passing on the Apple tax to their users.
This could prove painful for the likes of Amazon.com, who will be forced to give 30% of all Kindle book sales to Apple who, let’s not forget, are their direct competitor in this space.
Just today (astonishing timing, you’ll agree), Google Inc. has taken the wraps off their publishing platform, One Pass. As is becoming common, Google have taken Apple’s “give us the money and shut your mouth” approach and turned it on it’s head – publishers will only have to give 10% of their revenue to the search giant, and Google promise One Pass will offer a Kindle-style multi-platform approach allowing subscribers to access their content across a range of devices (and presumably in the cloud too).
Crucially, Google will also pass subscriber details (everything but payment details, which will be handled through Google Checkout) to publishers by default – Apple’s model is opt-in, Google’s is opt-out.
This publisher-friendliness will doubtlessly push business in Google’s direction, but given the insane money-making potential of the App Store, we’re sure many will swallow their pride and pay Apple their cut to be in the iOS game. The question is, which ones won’t?
