Apple has always felt like a strange player in the digital book market. They turned the music industry upside down with the iTunes Store, and when they introduced Apple Books, they might have thought they would do the same to the publishing industry. Kindle books had already made the major disruption, but the introduction of the iPad held out the promise of being the market-winning book replacement. But it wasn’t to be.
ALLi News Editor, Dan Holloway
This week, Apple announced that it was cutting 100 jobs, most of them from Apple Books. This indicates that the company is focusing less on selling books than it has done previously, perhaps in recognition that it may never dominate the market as it had once hoped.
One account I read on 9to5Mac made a very interesting editorial observation: “The ebook pie just isn’t big enough to satisfy Apple’s appetite for Services revenue after the author and publisher are paid.” That’s a salutary lesson in the kind of margins the tech industry is used to. Another report from TechCrunch further highlights Apple’s shift away from books, suggesting a broader reevaluation of their service offerings.
There hasn’t been much AI in the news this week, which makes for a rather pleasant segue into the first week of autumn. But the main news that has emerged has left many scraping their eyebrows off the ceiling. OpenAI’s latest round of investment negotiations has secured it a $100 billion valuation. Yes, that’s a 1 followed by 11 zeros. When we think about the size of the payments being mooted for licensing the rights to content for training purposes, it might be worth bearing in mind the size of the potential purse to be drawn upon.
And while we are on the subject of AI, the music industry has marked a major milestone in its AI journey. The Grammys will now allow work that includes an AI contribution to be considered for the industry-standard awards. This is a major about-face after 2023 when “Heart on My Sleeve” by Drake featuring The Weeknd was declared ineligible for its use of AI-generated lyrics.
This really does feel like a significant moment in the creative arts and prizes rewarding human creativity. Will other major prizes in other fields, such as ours, hold out? I will be sure to report!
