Publishers in the print world will happily sell subscriptions for less than the price of postage in order to increase their paid subscription count (and hence their ad dollars). To get 70% of the subscription money, all of the ad money, and have no printing/postage costs actually doesn't sound too bad for publishers. If Apple demanded that they get 30% of ad revenue too, that would start to be a much larger issue.
Slashdot Mirror
Publishers in the print world will happily sell subscriptions for less than the price of postage in order to increase their paid subscription count (and hence their ad dollars). To get 70% of the subscription money, all of the ad money, and have no printing/postage costs actually doesn't sound too bad for publishers. If Apple demanded that they get 30% of ad revenue too, that would start to be a much larger issue.