{"id":44702,"date":"2024-09-03T16:02:41","date_gmt":"2024-09-03T20:02:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=44702"},"modified":"2024-09-13T08:23:13","modified_gmt":"2024-09-13T12:23:13","slug":"apple-books-layoffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2024\/09\/03\/apple-books-layoffs\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple Books Layoffs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sixcolors.com\/post\/2024\/08\/apple-job-cuts-in-books-are-turning-the-page-in-the-wrong-direction\/\">Dan Moren<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/zeppelin.flights\/@dmoren\/113040065443564444\">Mastodon<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/apple.slashdot.org\/story\/24\/08\/29\/2016225\/apple-announces-rare-wave-of-job-cuts\">Slashdot<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gadgets\/2024\/08\/apple-lays-off-employees-working-on-books-and-news\/\">ArsTechnica<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/2024\/08\/28\/apple-lays-off-services-staff-apple-books\/\">MacRumors<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2024\/8\/28\/24230344\/apple-job-layoffs-books-news-apps-digital-services\">The Verge<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/sixcolors.com\/post\/2024\/08\/apple-job-cuts-in-books-are-turning-the-page-in-the-wrong-direction\/\"><p>In <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2024-08-28\/apple-cuts-about-100-services-jobs-as-part-of-priority-shift\">a report at Bloomberg<\/a> (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.<\/p><p>[&#8230;]<\/p><p>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&rsquo;re looking to cut costs and reduce focus&mdash;if the business works &ldquo;fine&rdquo; as is, then why invest more?<\/p><p>My disappointment stems from the fact that Apple is better positioned and equipped than <em>anyone else<\/em> 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&rsquo;t mean its misguided attempts to reinvent the reading experience as it&rsquo;s tried in the past&mdash;most avid readers are pretty happy with their the way they consume books.<\/p><p>[&#8230;]<\/p><p>The second option, to my mind, is one I&rsquo;ve <a href=\"https:\/\/www.macworld.com\/article\/2157617\/apple-ebooks-amazon-drm-libby.html\">advocated for before<\/a>: taking a page from Apple&rsquo;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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2024\/07\/25\/books-for-ipad-gets-the-photos-treatment\/\">Books for iPad Gets the Photos Treatment<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2022\/10\/07\/apple-books-in-ios-16\/\">Apple Books in iOS 16<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/11\/discontinuing-ibooks-author-and-itunes-u\/\">Discontinuing iBooks Author and iTunes U<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2017\/10\/24\/ibooks-author-conference-highlights-ecosystem-worries\/\">iBooks Author Conference Highlights Ecosystem Worries<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2016\/03\/08\/apple-to-pay-450-million-e-book-settlement\/\">Apple to Pay $450 Million E-Book Settlement<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p id=\"apple-books-layoffs-update-2024-09-06\">Update (2024-09-06): <a href=\"https:\/\/sixcolors.com\/post\/2024\/09\/why-apple-books-works-for-me\/\">Shelly Brisbin<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/sixcolors.com\/post\/2024\/09\/why-apple-books-works-for-me\/\">\n<p>Whether it&rsquo;s the familiarity of doing business with Apple directly, or the desire to store and sync purchases with the Books app on all their devices, I&rsquo;ve heard loud and clear that Books is a place I need to be. A couple of times I made Kindle versions of the book and attempted to sell them on Amazon. I got very little traction there &#x2013; perhaps because I didn&rsquo;t promote its availability well, but more likely because people with accessibility needs don&rsquo;t gravitate toward the Kindle platform. The Apple Books app not only offers a lot of flexibility in text formats and themes, it works flawlessly with the VoiceOver screen reader and other Apple speech tools.<\/p>\n<p>From a production standpoint, the Books store is easy-peasy for me, too, since I create the book as an ePub &#x2013; the format supported by Books and the one I prefer to offer directly because of its native accessibility. All I have to do is load the book into iTunes Connect and submit it for publication in as many country-specific stores as I want. And while I&rsquo;m at it, I can choose whether or not to apply DRM. I&rsquo;ve chosen not to do so.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p id=\"apple-books-layoffs-update-2024-09-13\">Update (2024-09-13): See also: <a href=\"https:\/\/talk.macpowerusers.com\/t\/i-m-glad-i-haven-t-invested-in-apple-books\/38283\">Mac Power Users Talk<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dan Moren (Mastodon, Slashdot, ArsTechnica, MacRumors, The Verge): 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.[&#8230;]Apple has managed to achieve itself a comfortable, if distant second place in ebooks without really spending [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2024-09-03T20:02:44Z","apple_news_api_id":"e74f3404-5ae9-436a-aa88-687f47d1bda5","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2024-09-13T12:23:15Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABQ==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/A5080BFrpQ2qqiGh_R9G9pQ","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[38,182,166,93,847,31,1968,30],"class_list":["post-44702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-apple","tag-drm","tag-ebooks","tag-ibooks","tag-ibooks-store","tag-ios","tag-layoffs","tag-mac"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44702"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44855,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44702\/revisions\/44855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}