Apple job cuts in Books are turning the page in the wrong direction
The next chapter of Apple Books’s life is looking a little bleak.
In a report at Bloomberg (paywalled, naturally), Mark Gurman says that the company has laid off about a hundred people, primarily in the team behind Apple Books and the Apple Bookstore.
Apple Books has become less of a priority for the company, which doesn’t see it as a major part of its services lineup. The Books app is still expected to get new features over time, according to the people.
Books has long been a weird business for Apple. The company made a big push back at the time of its introduction to try and steal market share from Amazon, courting publishers with terms that included better prices and an agency model split. It subsequently got slapped by the Department of Justice for some ill-advised business decisions related to that pricing, and then seemingly got scared off from trying anything in the market ever again.
Which is a shame, because in the intervening years Amazon has only continued to consolidate its market share and desperately needs a serious competitor to shake things up.
Sharing a little of my own data here: I’ve self-published my own short stories across most major ebook market places. Amazon makes up the bulk of those downloads and sales—53 percent and 66 percent, respectively. Apple comes in a solid second place in sales, with 21 percent, and third place in downloads with 11 percent.1 My literary agency has also published my novel All Souls Lost in ebook across those platforms, and Apple Books sales are also in second there, accounting for 18 percent of sales to 63 percent for Amazon.
I suspect my numbers are probably skewed by the fact that my audience—that’s you all reading this, in large part—are overrepresented by users of Apple products.2 That said, to my eyes, Apple has managed to achieve itself a comfortable, if distant second place in ebooks without really spending much in the way of time and effort. Which perhaps explains why they’re looking to cut costs and reduce focus—if the business works “fine” as is, then why invest more?
My disappointment stems from the fact that Apple is better positioned and equipped than anyone else in the industry to take on Amazon head-to-head in ebooks. But doing so would require the company to do something different. And I don’t mean its misguided attempts to reinvent the reading experience as it’s tried in the past—most avid readers are pretty happy with their the way they consume books.
One move would, obviously, be for Apple to release its own dedicated e-reader device with an e-ink screen. Kindles and Kobos are so successful because they replicate several of the best things about physical books—high contrast screens that are easy to read in all conditions, long-lasting battery life, and extreme light weight and portability—while bringing plenty in the way of convenience—to wit, a nearly infinite amount of books in a tiny device.
Do I expect Apple to do this? Absolutely not. Cupertino seems pretty comfortable with saying its e-reading devices are iPads and iPhones. Which is clearly understandable from the company’s perspective: for one, the company already makes these devices and they are passable for reading. For another, the most popular e-readers are generally low-cost, low-margin devices—not the kind of market Apple likes to play in. I’m sorry, nobody wants a $500 e-reader.3
So if embarking upon a new hardware product is out4, the biggest opportunity Apple has is to change the business side of things. I can think of two primary options there: the first is to provide some sort of, yes, subscription program. Amazon already offers a version of this with Kindle Unlimited, which provides access to an all-you-can-eat model—but only for certain content, as its terms for publishers require a window of exclusivity for electronic copies, which generally counts out traditionally published books. That’s certainly been a boon for Amazon, which not only picks up recurring subscription revenue, but has provided an entirely separate marketplace of content. (Albeit one that has its own game to play.)
While that deal might benefit some voracious readers and might bolster both Apple’s books business and its services revenue, it comes with some potential limitations for authors and publishers, depending on how the terms and royalties are structured.
The second option, to my mind, is one I’ve advocated for before: taking a page from Apple’s own digital music market of the 2000s and figuring out a way to make the Apple Books the premiere purveyor of ebooks without digital rights management. Ideally it would be combined with a seamless process to deliver those DRM-free books to your third-party e-reader of choice.5
The potential here is to expand the market beyond those people who will only ever buy and read ebooks on Apple’s own devices. Which is clearly not a huge chunk of the market, because if it was, the company would probably not be looking to cut costs by laying off people. If it’s about growth, this is how you do it.
Do I think Apple will make this move? I’m not optimistic, especially since it would require publishers to get onboard. There are a few who already sell DRM-free ebooks, including a major imprint of the big five and my own mid-size publisher, but fear of piracy runs deep.6
Perhaps eight years isn’t long enough in Apple’s institutional memory to have erased the sting of its defeat in the ebooks case, or maybe it’s just made the company gun-shy when it comes to trying anything else in the market. I think that’s a shame, because this is a great chance for Apple to change the narrative.
Updated on 8/28: A previous version of this article misstated the terms of Apple’s push with publishers when it first launched its ebook marketplace.
- It’s beat out in downloads by the fact you can download the short stories right from my website. ↩
- I don’t have information from my publisher about my Galactic Cold War books, but anecdotally I can say that I’ve been on more bestseller lists on Apple Books than any other platform, which both speaks to my audience and how few sales it takes to move the needle there. 😂 ↩
- Aside from Scott McNulty, who will probably buy any ebook reader. ↩
- Setting aside something weird like an iPhone or iPad with an e-ink screen. ↩
- This is already something more tech savvy readers have been doing for years. ↩
- Though to be clear, most readers I know are more than happy to pay for books, and if readers want free books, well, public libraries are right there. Piracy certainly abounds, but DRM isn’t really slowing it down, any more than it did with digital music or video. ↩
[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His latest novel, the sci-fi spy thriller The Armageddon Protocol, is out now.]
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