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Time Inc. Signs Magazine Deal With Apple
redletterdave writes "Time Inc., the largest magazine publisher in the U.S., has decided to embrace digital distribution. On Thursday, Time Inc. announced that it will make all of its magazines available over the Newsstand application built by Apple. The agreement was confirmed by Time Inc. CEO Laura Lang and Apple's senior VP of Internet software development Eddy Cue. The two company executives agreed to allow Apple Newsstand users to subscribe to more than 20 magazines owned by Time Inc., including Sports Illustrated, People, and Entertainment Weekly."
Rotten fruit.
Time already offers digital subscriptions. All this does is add the ability to subscribe through Newsstand. A nice win for Apple, but it sounds like Time got the concessions they wanted in order to make the deal.
when Apple stop being Mormons and you can buy Playboy!
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
Whoa... I didn't know that. Would we have any photos of these sweaty teenage Chines girls.? .. er... for the archives...
Dude!... Write a fucking backend.
Make it process orders in one step for 400M users -- it needs to scale accordingly, btw.
Make it deal with refunds, chargebacks, reverse-chargebacks, complaints, fraud, yada yada, pretty much anything that can go wrong when you do business.
Make it manage subscriptions, including cancellations. And rentals. And DRM.
Make it deal with taxes in 150+ countries, including local variations where applicable.
Make it do your monthly accounting, including subcontractor payments.
Make it provide all sorts of metrics to your subcontractors, too.
Oh, and QA test anything your subcontractors send you, too. Check for malware, crashes, etc., anything that might make those millions of end-users unsatisfied.
Do all that, and more, and you'll appreciate how 30% is a bargain.
Alternatively, just shut up. Because you've absolutely no fucking clue how hard it is to create and operate a backend.
When Apple announced the terms for Newsstand, the 30% cut was not the major bone of contention between the magazine publishers and Apple. It was the fact that Apple refused to pass on subscriber information automatically. Instead, subscribers had to click an "Allow" button in a dialog box asking if they wanted their personal information sent along to the publishers. The publishers were outraged that Apple made the process opt-in, dramatically reducing the treasure trove of information they could sell to advertisers.
I have no idea if Apple made concessions to Time on the issue of subscriber privacy, but knowing them I think it's unlikely. As far as Apple is concerned, folks with iTunes accounts are Apple's customers, and subscriptions through Newsstand are just some of the services that they offer. I'm actually with Apple on this one. The terms for Newsstand make it clear that subscribers should have a choice about the disposition of their personal information, while the publishers treat it as something to which they are automatically entitled.
Apple is up front and honest about what their take is. It's 30%. Amazon has deceptive practices - they've fooled you and they've fooled many more.
A $9.99 ebook, same price at both Amazon and Apple iBooks. Apple takes $2.99. Amazon takes $4.89. (49%)
http://andrewhy.de/amazons-markup-of-digital-delivery-to-indie-authors-is-129000/
Speaking as yet another person who does actually know about digital downloads, having sold them myself, Apple's 30% is indeed a bargain. Prior to them being on the scene the distributor for my mobile software downloads was taking 43%.
Anyone who says Apple's 30% is unreasonable is simply showing that they don't know what they are talking about.
Or alcohol, depending on what process you use ;)
Although I prefer pear cider myself.