If I made such a store I would use the web hosting model, you have a super cheap plan and if you want more feature you pay extra, I would care about your sales similar on how web hosting do not care about what you sell from your website.
Why is web hosting so cheap and you have so many options? Because of competition, allow competition with at least 5 stores and you will see different prices and features.
Let's say running an ebook service, that cost cost you some money, a portion of your profit will go into building this shop, that will also be used by another party, because you have millions of users and a good trusted brand. in order to sell on that market you sell a some subcription based like a web hosting.
Party B, after using your premuim service, decide he will use your service just as a frontstore, sending your customer to his own website to complete purchase.
Yes, my web hosting is not jealous if I pay them 100$/year and I do sales of 1 million. If say my site generates too much traffic then I will have to upgrade the CPU,HDD etc. They make money when I am successful and use their resources. I can always change the web hosting and still reach my existing customers where with Apple I can't reach my existing customers if Apple kicks me out(see Epic)
I dont think that is a fair comparison, you took away all the issues with branding, your customer dont really care if you are hosting a website yourself or aws or anything else, probably most of them wont even know what that means.
If you want to start to sell ebooks (or anything really) you get an advantage by placing it in a well known store, you can prove me wrong but i think that is a fair statement.
So it is really hard for me to accept as fair a situation where you could build a store, build the brand reputation, host other people product and not get a compensation.
Netflix or Epic do not benefit of Apple Store brand, my bank does not put their app in Google or Apple sore because they hope to get on "top apps" , they put their app there because they have no choice, the users are there and they want an app.
If you think the Apple Sore brand or "top apps" is important then have extra options (like web hosting). So I might not want my app to be promoted, I just want my users to be able to install the app I link from my website similar how they can install it on their PC. If my updates are eat6inb bandwidth then I pay for that, if I want to be promoted I can pay for that, if I want support I can pay for that, if I want an IDE I can pay for that etc.
I think you are putting popular apps like Netflix,Epic,Dropbox, my bank thagt have no choice to be on all platforms with some small video game or TODO app that benefits by getting exposed to people on a "Top apps" or "Similar apps" screen.
yes, i am putting all the developer on the app store on the same level, because coding into law the distinction that it's so obvious for you is not going to be easy. at what point "randomgamecompany" became so big to be promoted to "i dont need to pay for the app store anymore." Laws are not perfect, nobody should work for free.
I guess I should be more specific. If I get kicked off of Fortnite, can I play in Fortnite’s sandbox? Can I buy virtual coins to use in Fortnite from a third party?
Why does Epic get to be the only company that can sell
virtual currency in Fortnite?
What if instead of buying apps with money, Apple made everyone by “Apple points” to buy things on the App Store like MS use to do?
Why is web hosting so cheap and you have so many options? Because of competition, allow competition with at least 5 stores and you will see different prices and features.