> Amazon chose not to allow users to buy books from the app. Apple is not stopping them.

Internal emails show how an Amazon ad prompted Steve Jobs and Phil Schiller to block in-app purchases of Kindle books on iOS https://9to5mac.com/2020/07/30/internal-emails-show-how-an-a...

Why You Can't Buy Books from the Kindle app on iPhone or iPad in 2018 https://www.techspot.com/article/1597-how-to-buy-kindle-book...

In quite some countries, book pricing is fixed by the publisher and cannot vary between websites according to the law. If AAPL takes a 30% margin, the whole model cannot work and you are much better off not selling anything.

I fail to see what the relationship between the publisher and the seller has to do with Apple.

Because in case you're not aware Amazon isn't some mom and pop store. It has enough clout to negotiate terms with publishers.

> Because in case you're not aware Amazon isn't some mom and pop store. It has enough clout to negotiate terms with publishers.

Not everywhere, as GP wrote. In France, the price of a book is fixed: it sells the same price whether you’re Amazon or a small bookstore (you’re allowed to offer a 5% reduction max).

True, but the amount the publisher gets is negotiable.

Not saying that 30% is acceptable, of course - I have no idea what the margins on books are.

That is disingenuous, at best. Apple takes a large percentage on purchases through the phone, so Amazon doesn't allow the purchase through it. It's not an arbitrary decision on their end.

My understanding is that Amazon also takes their chunk of flesh from book publishers/authors. Honest question then: how is that different? You can publish a book but if you aren’t on Amazon you drastically limit your exposure to potential readers.

Amazon doesn't block customers from buying books from elsewhere and reading them on Amazon devices. It's fiddlier than buying through the integrated Amazon store, but it's a fully supported way of using your Amazon device.

I'm not aware of them blocking sellers from listing books on Amazon and also at a lower price elsewhere (though it wouldn't surprise me if they did), and they certainly don't block sellers from telling their customers how much Amazon's cut is.

You do run into a bit of a problem though: Amazon wants their cut, Apple wants their cut, the credit card company wants their cut, the publisher wants their cut, and there are likely others in the chain as well. That's not to say that each party doesn't deserve payment for their services, but there does have to be some limitations on how much they can take.

And that limit should reflect how involved they are in the existence of the product. Is a credit card company intrinsically vital to the existence of a book? No. Then their cap should be reasonably low, like in Europe.

Is Apple intrinsically vital to the existence of an ebook?