Thursday, February 26, 2009

Publishing Deflation: iPhone Store

Conventional wisdom declares that content on the internet is free. Period.

The CW said the same thing about music, of course, until Apple proved that the problem wasn't that people wouldn't pay for music online, the problem was that the labels made it really hard to do so (and that people weren't willing to pay much).

So now Apple lets you buy books on the iPhone. Hurray! Maybe people WILL pay for content.

The problem is that the same book that costs $24.99 in a store costs $4.99 in the iPhone store. Even taking in the paper and distribution costs savings, that price point is not going to cheer many publishers.

The main beneficiary of iTunes was Apple (and customers), not artists and labels. Here we go again.

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