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Comment by Tyrannosaurs | Hacker News Reader

Why should I be that bothered about this?

As a consumer I want less people between me and the actual producer of the work so another intermediary going out of business bothers me not at all.

My ideal world is that I buy a novel direct from an author, perhaps paying a small commission to a single intermediary. Author to publisher to iFlow to Apple to me isn't efficient.

Yes there is an issue here with how Apple and the publishers behave but there is also a significant issue with how much value iFlow were adding in exchange for their cut. A slightly different (maybe better) reader simply isn't worth the 30% they seem to be planning on.

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Consumers never benefit from a single dominating middleman in the long run.

As a consumer why would you care about the route content takes from producer to consumer? The only thing that matters is the content and how you consume it. If iFlow offered a better way to consume it then you should be happy to get it from them, and sad that you can no longer.

I really don't see where 'efficiency' comes into it?

My point is that for a business to work the value you add must be in some way proportional to the money you make - if it's not you're going to be vulnerable and that's what happened here. I don't care about efficiency as a consumer but I recognise that if a business is making a transaction less efficient while adding little actual benefit that's likely (not certainly but likely) to be a problem for them.

In essence the iFlow USP seems to be their reader app - everything else was being done by someone else either the same or better. How is that seriously going to a warrant 30% cut (which is what they were getting from the publishers) in the face of greater choice and likely better prices from Amazon and Apple?

Selling books from large scale conventional publishers is a bulk market right now and if you can't answer the question "how do I compete with Amazon?" you're in trouble and "a nice reader app" simply isn't a good answer.

>>>Why should I be that bothered about this?

Because the Agency price-fixing model has led to eBooks not being priced by market forces but by a cartel that supplies over 90% of the existing market.

That's a bigger issue than Apple though that goes through the publishers, Apple and Amazon and isn't going to be solved by another couple of competitors who weren't really competitive.

The fundamental issue is that no one else can really compete with Apple on the iOS platform because Apple doesn't have to pay the 30% cut.

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