Comments on ePublishing Associates: Is there an antitrust issue at play with iTunes an...

@mdscott, thanks. Apparently "antitrust"...

2009-11-30T21:54:20.128-06:00

@mdscott, thanks. Apparently "antitrust" is not the correct term. I'm sure if there were a legal violation it would have been uncovered by someone bigger than B&H and smarter than me before now. It just feels criminal that we can't sell our own content through a channel with whom we are already doing business without involving a third party--especially one demanding an exorbitant share of the net revenue. It is a flawed model based on the old economies of licensing physical book/audio products and I've come to expect more from digital product companies and market leaders as progressive as Apple and Amazon.

The simple answer is no, it is not an antitrust vi...

2009-11-30T20:12:25.178-06:00

The simple answer is no, it is not an antitrust violation. Neither iTunes nor Audible have a monopoly on selling audiobooks online. Without market power, there is no antitrust violation.

Thanks April. Exactly what I was thinking, at leas...

2009-11-30T18:42:23.021-06:00

Thanks April. Exactly what I was thinking, at least until the rules or terms change.

You can publish your audiobooks as apps in the Boo...

2009-11-30T18:04:09.508-06:00

You can publish your audiobooks as apps in the Books category of the app store, since Audible doesn't own the Books category of the app store the way it owns the audiobook category in the main iTunes store.

It's an inelegant workaround, to be sure, but it's one way to do an end-run around the Audible-iTunes monopoly.