Steve Jobs Doesn’t Want to Kill Publishers, But Apple’s Subscription Strat Will | Hacker News Reader

Steve Jobs Doesn’t Want to Kill Publishers, But Apple’s Subscription Strat Will

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8 pointscwan14 comments

End run around the apple subscription debacle:

Publishers already offer multiple rates for different subscription lengths. Often the cost of a year subscription to a magazine is 1/3 to 1/4 of the newsstand cover price. Newspapers are similar. As far as I know, there's no requirement to offer every pricing variation available via in-app purchase.

Solution: Just offer the cover price, or some shorter, higher cost/issue via in-app purchase. Offer other deals, including physical/digital combos, externally via your own store.

It would be nice to do that, but if Apple has shown us anything, it's that you either play entirely by their rules, or you don't play at all. ANY attempt to circumvent this will just mean your app gets bounced, then you're fucked. Once you're in the game, you'll have customers who depend on that app being available on the iPad. You can't risk pissing Apple off, so these types of workarounds aren't going to work. Anything that just involves physical goods is fair game, but if you're offering anything that's accessible through the app, you're digging your own grave by messing around.

Imagine a "digital + physical" bundle that costs less than the digital alone, or a once yearly "archive" CD of the entire year's issues.

Apple's policy is here:

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/02/15appstore.html

The pertinent section: "However, Apple does require that if a publisher chooses to sell a digital subscription separately outside of the app, that same subscription offer must be made available, at the same price or less, to customers who wish to subscribe from within the app."

So, throw in a single letter once a year and you have physical + digital, and there is no issue with different pricing vs. App Store.

You seem to have missed the part of their policy that says "We reserve the right to change our policy if you try to do an end run around our policies."

That's exactly how the current policy came to be: People like Amazon decided to give razors away (what's 30% of free?) and sell the blades on their own stores without giving Apple a cut.

Could you link to where you've seen Apple say that? It's not in the article I linked.

The developer license agreement states this very clearly. Apple does not publish this agreement, but you can get yourself a copy easily.

Versions of it have been published on the web from time to time, e.g. By the EFF:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/03/iphone-developer-progr...

The text in question is: Apple may change the Program Requirements or the terms of this Agreement at any time. New or modified Program Requirements will not retroactively apply to Applications already in distribution. In order to continue using the Apple Software or any services, You must accept and agree to the new Program Requirements and/or new terms of this Agreement. If You do not agree to new Program Requirements or new terms, Your use of the Apple Software and any services will be suspended or terminated by Apple. You agree that Your acceptance of such new Agreement terms or Program Requirements may be signified electronically, including without limitation, by Your checking a box or clicking on an "agree" or similar button. Nothing in this Section shall affect Apple's rights under Section 8 below.

How is that different from any other EULA for any other service?

That seems to me like a generic boilerplate catchall, which doesn't speak to this specific issue.

I'll believe the gloom and doom about 30% on subscriptions when publishers stop sending me postcards offering 90% off the subscription price if I renew for another year.

I'd really like to say that's a zinger, since I am mostly on Apple's side about all this. But the fact of course is that they're offering you X percent off the cover price, not X percent off the actual subscription price. The other fact is that whatever discounted rate happens to be the REAL price of a subscription will end up being the rate that the publisher in question has to offer in-app in iOS as well.

That said, I completely agree with you about the gloom and doom, because that normal subscription price includes the costs of actually printing a paper magazine and shipping it to the customer. I'm pretty sure that in the vast majority of cases, the costs for providing an online edition will be much less. So there's still a profit margin here, and a sizable one.

80% of a typical magazine's income is from advertisements. So 90% off isn't much of an income cut for the magazine.

For now, newspapers are unprofitable and Apple is not really interested in attracting a large number of independently minded companies - their deal with Murdoch is much more in keeping with the their objective of exclusive content.

Instead Apple's subscription terms are aimed at streaming music apps which will compete with any iTunes streaming service and Amazon which already competes in the eBook marketplace.

Is Apple also taking a cut of the advertising? That's where the real money is with publishers.

Do you people realize Amazon takes a 70% cut on Kindle subscriptions?

I was picturing an apple guitar when I first read the headline.

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