I could be wrong, but my recollection is that 35% is a much higher percentage of the sale than the publisher gets from a physical book, which goes through two or three levels of markup. (Which is another factor in the question of what price publishers need to cover their costs, of course.)
That doesn't mean they have to take it: who gets how much of the benefits of disintermediation is pretty much a pure matter of contract negotiation (which includes hardball tactics like threatening to take the football and go home). There's nothing wrong with Amazon saying "we want most of it, since we're providing the disintermediation", and there's nothing wrong with a publisher saying "without our product, you don't have a sale, so give us more or no deal"-- that's what both sides pay lawyers to work out. (And, of course, what both sides make public statements to influence. From where I sit, it looks like the publishers won that part of it, since I see more sympathy for Macmillan than Amazon, but I don't know how representative that is.)
Amazon's real problem seems to have been timing-- if they'd tried this a year ago, they might have been successful. Now that everyone and his cousin is coming out with ereaders and big players like Barnes and Noble and especially Apple make it questionable that Amazon will retain its iTunes-like dominance over the ebook market, their leverage was much reduced. I can wish that the negotiation had stayed primarily about who kept how much, while recognizing that it's critical that ebooks be priced low enough to avoid piracy going mainstream. But one consequence of failed strongarm tactics is that the other side will want to make sure that it's harder to repeat them in the future if, e.g., Amazon manages to remain central after all.
Which isn't all that unlikely-- they already have an iPod app that can be retrofitted to the iPad easily enough, they can go cross-platform to other devices more easily than Apple can if the iPad doesn't completely take over the market, and right now people associate Amazon with books more than they do iTunes. I don't discount Apple's market savvy, but their becoming as big for books as they are for music doesn't strike me as a slam dunk.
no subject
That doesn't mean they have to take it: who gets how much of the benefits of disintermediation is pretty much a pure matter of contract negotiation (which includes hardball tactics like threatening to take the football and go home). There's nothing wrong with Amazon saying "we want most of it, since we're providing the disintermediation", and there's nothing wrong with a publisher saying "without our product, you don't have a sale, so give us more or no deal"-- that's what both sides pay lawyers to work out. (And, of course, what both sides make public statements to influence. From where I sit, it looks like the publishers won that part of it, since I see more sympathy for Macmillan than Amazon, but I don't know how representative that is.)
Amazon's real problem seems to have been timing-- if they'd tried this a year ago, they might have been successful. Now that everyone and his cousin is coming out with ereaders and big players like Barnes and Noble and especially Apple make it questionable that Amazon will retain its iTunes-like dominance over the ebook market, their leverage was much reduced. I can wish that the negotiation had stayed primarily about who kept how much, while recognizing that it's critical that ebooks be priced low enough to avoid piracy going mainstream. But one consequence of failed strongarm tactics is that the other side will want to make sure that it's harder to repeat them in the future if, e.g., Amazon manages to remain central after all.
Which isn't all that unlikely-- they already have an iPod app that can be retrofitted to the iPad easily enough, they can go cross-platform to other devices more easily than Apple can if the iPad doesn't completely take over the market, and right now people associate Amazon with books more than they do iTunes. I don't discount Apple's market savvy, but their becoming as big for books as they are for music doesn't strike me as a slam dunk.