WHAT?
Posted on 05/14/2011 11:52:57 AM PDT by Bob
Dear iFlowReader User,
Thank you for being one of our valued customers. We are writing to you today to make a very sad announcement. BeamItDown Software and the iFlow Reader will cease operations as of May 31, 2011. We absolutely do not want to do this, but Apple has made it completely impossible for anyone but Apple to make a profit selling contemporary ebooks on any iOS device. We cannot survive selling books at a loss and so we are forced to go out of business. We bet everything on Apple and iOS and then Apple killed us by changing the rules in the middle of the game. This is a very sad day for innovation on iOS in this important application category. We are a small company that thought we could build a better product. We think that we did but we are powerless against Apple’s absolute control of the iOS platform.
The first of this letter part tells you what actions that you must take before the end of May to protect the books that you have. For those of you who are interested, the second part of this letter explains in detail what happened to us and why we are forced to shutdown.
(Excerpt) Read more at iflowreader.com ...
The crux of the matter is that Apple is now requiring us, as well as all other ebook sellers, to give them 30% of the selling price of any ebook that we sell from our iOS app. Unfortunately, because of the “agency model” that has been adopted by the largest publishers, our gross margin on ebooks after paying the wholesaler is less than 30%, which means that we would have to take a loss on all ebooks sold. This is not a sustainable business model.
Where did the agency model come from and what is it? The agency model was created by Apple who made it a requirement for any publisher who wished to sell books through Apple’s iBooks app. The agency model has three key points:
The publisher is now the retailer of record. The company selling the eBook to the end user is an “agent” of the retailer who receives a commission on the sale. All sales agents are required to sell books at the same retail price, which is set by the publisher. No one can sell at a different price. All sales agents get a 30% commission on the sale of a book. No one gets a different deal. Prior to the agency model, publishers typically offered retailers a 50% discount.
The key point here is that all sellers now get a 30% commission and Apple now wants a 30% fee, which is all of our gross margin and then some. The six largest publishers have now all adopted the agency model. These publishers account for nearly 90% of all ebooks sold. Random House was the last publisher to adopt the agency model, which they did on March 1 of this year. You may have noticed that all 17,000 Random House titles disappeared from our catalog on February 28. They appeared in Apple's iBooks catalog the following day. We, as well as all other small booksellers, have yet to complete an agency agreement with Random House. Up until February 28, these were our most profitable items because we were still getting a 50% discount on these ebooks. With an eight-hour notice, all of these titles disappeared from our store as well as the stores of all other small ebook sellers.
Five of us spent nearly a year and a half of our lives and over a million dollars in cash and sweat equity developing the iFlowReader app with its unique AutoScrolling approach to reading that many of you really like. We think that our product is the best one available on iOS for reading ebooks. We had extensive plans to make it even better. We looked to the future of ebooks for inspiration while Apple and others were looking at the printed books of the past. This explains the cute, but gratuitous page turning animations, and old-timey bookshelves, which are all very amusing at first, but not very useful in the end.
We sent a letter to Apple VP Philip Schiller in September 2009 to confirm our business model. Apple told us they couldn't guarantee anything - submit the application and they'd let us know after submission. We submitted our new iFlowReader app Apple in November of 2010 and they approved it a few days later. After approval, we made substantial additional investments in licensing fees, integration fees, and server fees so that we could open our ebook store on December 2, 2010. Two months later, Apple changed the rules and put us out of business. They now want 30% of the sale price of any books, which they know full well, is all of our profits and more. What sounds like a reasonable demand when packaged by Apple's extraordinary public relations department is essentially an eviction notice to all ebook sellers on iOS. After over three years of developing products for iOS during which we had over six million downloads of our BeamItDown iFlowReader products, Apple is giving us the boot by making it financially impossible for us to survive. They want all of the eBook business on iOS and since they have the unilateral power to get it, we are out of business and the iFlow Reader is dead.
We put our faith in Apple and they screwed us. This happened even though we went to great lengths to clear our plans with Apple because we did not want to make this substantial investment of time and money blindly. Apple's response to our detailed inquiries was to tell us that our plans did not infringe their rules in any way, which was true at the time, but there is one little catch. Apple can change the rules at any time and they did. Sadly they must have known full well that they were going to do this. Apple's iBooks was already in development when we talked to them and they certainly must have known that their future plans would doom us to failure no matter how good our product was. We never really had a chance. Thank You For Your Support
We greatly appreciate your patronage and we sincerely regret that we are forced to do this. We are sorry for any inconvenience that this causes. We had a great product and our customer list was growing daily. We were rapidly adding books to our catalog and we had plans to add many, many more by adding PDF support to the iFlowReader along with many other exciting features. We were also in the middle of discussions with OEM customers in many countries who wanted to license our technology in countries around the world. We had investors ready to invest money in our future. It was the American dream that we all strive for. Sadly, the America that we thought we were working in turned out to be a totalitarian regime and the dictator decided that he wanted all of what we had. Our dream is now over.
I love my Kindle.
A major ancient industry is undergoing a fundamental radical transformation. The stakes are very high. There will be corporate casualties.
Apple appears to have set itself up so that it's the one who decides who the casualties will be. (And it certainly won't be them, if they have anything to do with it.)
“I love my Kindle.”
Me too!
As a former bookseller in the brick and mortar world, I can tell you that a 30% margin is something that most booksellers can only dream of. (And think of the poor oil companies who have to get by on a mere 7-8%.)
That is not to say that these guys don't have a real complaint. Apple can be a little 'overbearing' with their vendors, given the power that comes from their unique position in the marketplace.
For the list.
Good thing there is Android.
Don’t want an Apple Ipad.
Lie down with dogs.......
A company should NEVER bet their future on the whims of another company. There are countless former vendors (now bankrupt) of Walmart that will attest to that.
I sell my eBooks through Amazon (Kindle) and Barnes and Noble (Nook). Both of those take 30%, which is fine by me since they do all the work once I publish my products.
I don't sell throuh Apple platforms because of their stupid rules... like requiring me to own an Apple computer to publish through them.
Apple’s business model involves, for lack of better terminology, the unconditional surrender of not only its users but its suppliers as well. As long as the millions of lambs keep marching to the slaughter, happy with what Apple provides them, Apple will continue to operate this way.
I find it absolutely mind-boggling that Apple has as much support as they do on here. Taken objectively, what they produce is very good (if not overpriced). The way they operate, though, is pure collectivism.
“Good thing there is Android.”
Don’t think for a second that Google won’t be doing something similar in the future....
All of these companies are the same.
Oh I know they will. It’s all about owning everything and everything about you.
I don't love mine.
I'm close to being sorry I bought the damn thing.
How come?
Sounds like the old Microsoft.
What the heck has happened to the IT industry? Microsoft is becoming the good guy and Apple and Google the evil empire.
I read on my Verizon $1.00 (Black Friday) Samsung Galaxy Fascinate Android phone.
I could not justify the extra $$ for a dedicated reader. (My kids love their Kindles & Nooks)
eBooks are great!
Typical Apple business practices. Let others take the risks, and once the successful products shake out, stick the knife in the back of guy who did all of the work.
You would let someone decide if you would be a casualty?
Or would you rather be the one doing triage?
Bottom line, Apple isn’t any different than any other large company, including Microsoft.
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