Steve Jobs emails that show how to win a negotiation
My two big takeaways from this are:1. Amazon sells every Kindle ebook at a loss of $3 -- they pay $13 wholesale and sell it for $9.99. I thought this was a typo, but then Jobs repeated the figure (though he said $12.50). It was my impression that Amazon also sells the Kindle itself at near-cost, so does that mean that Amazon's entire ebook business has been running at a loss the whole time?2. Jobs certainly did win this negotiation, but ultimately they were both wrong. As Jobs says, "Heck, Amazon is selling these books at $9.99, and who knows, maybe they are right and we will fail even at $12.99." Amazon's share of the ebook market in the US is 65%, with Barnes and Noble (who also charge $9.99 for most books) another 25%. iBooks has the remaining 10%, nothing like the success of iTunes in the music market.