For whatever reason the 70/30 split seems prevalent across digital stores, although, at least with ebooks, there are many hoops and exceptions.
The reason i started this topic is that I’ve noticed there is some pushback in other media.
Apple is getting sued over its version. This has a bit of a twist in that developers are arguing that the 70/30 split is unfair because the Apple App Store is the only way to delivery products to Apple ios devices.
If anyone else is a PC gamer, you’re probably buying games on Steam. Which uses 70/30 of course. Or did. Some time ago they added tiers where when a game gets into the high end (millions of $) the revenue split is reduced in favor of the publisher. This was an inducement to keep big publishers, who are and were starting to sell directly.
However, Epic Games recently came into a pile of cash (Fortnite) and for some reason decided to open a digital game store with an 88/12 split. They are also dumping that cash into signing exclusive deals and paying off returns for people pissed they can’t get the game on Steam.
So far, Steam hasn’t responded with a better revenue split, they appear to be relying on their better store front features and riding out the storm.
Now, to books!
While Amazon dominates, there are a wide variety of places to buy and sell, yet the 70/30 (or worse) still holds on.
Any ideas why it exists? And any soothsayers willing to guess if it will change for the better? Or get worse?
I’d speculate the KDP select is simply too dominant for another company to break the Amazon near-monopoly by offering better revenue splits in exchange for temporary or permanent exclusivity. Without that exclusive period, there wouldn’t be an advantage for a retailer to pay better.