So why hasn’t Random House joined the pentumvirate of publishers coming to the iPad? Their big competition — Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, Harper-Collins and Penguin — have all jumped on board, so what’s keeping Random House away? According to an article in the Financial Times, they’re worried about what the iPad will do to prices, specifically starting a selling point battle.
Random House chief executive Markus Dohle did say there was a chance of making a deal with Apple before launch, but said he was treading carefully, as Apple’s pricing regime could erode established publishing practices.
Which seems odd, as Apple is offering a bigger share of the sales to publishers on the iPad than Amazon is offering over their ebook service for the Kindle — Cupertino is keeping 30%, just like they do with iTunes music.
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Their publishing practices are irrelevant. When will the purveyors of music, movies, television, books, newspapers, etc. ad infinitum realize that CONTENT is the only thing that matters?!? Being tied to a specific, especially non-electronic, medium is, at this point in time, not only self-defeating, but indicative of gross misconduct of one’s business. The paradigm has shifted and putting one’s corporate head in the sand and hoping for things to shift back is idiocy.