App store cut

The other detail I wanted to talk about, with respect to the ATP show, is the money going to the App Store.

I can see where John is coming from, as far as volume discounts are concerned.  And maybe that's a reasonable way to go.

I disagree a bit, though, insofar as I'm not at all sure Apple is making a mistake is drawing a line at "30% or bust".  I guess I'm mostly in agreement with Marco on that, and that it didn't matter to Amazon.

But the reason I wanted to comment is to note that this does present an interesting opportunity for Amazon.  Since Amazon never allowed in-app purchases of books on iPads (a reasonable position, coming from them, I think), they never had any idea of whether that was working out well for them.

But for comiXology, they've got historical data on purchasing, so they'll know whether it's worth keeping out in-app purchases there.  I'm wondering whether it'll be enough money that they'll re-enable it in the near future.

My bet is that it'll prevent new people coming into comiXology, and cut down the people still using it by a large percentage (basically to only those people doing, in effect, monthly subscriptions).

I guess we'll see.  I wish we'd be able to see the dollars change, but Amazon would never do that, whether it was good or bad.