[jtbigwoo]

There's a great moment in the first Jobs email:

>>4. $9 per new release should represent a gross margin neutral business model for the publishers. We are not asking them to make any less money. As for the artists, giving them the same amount of royalty as they make today, leaving the publisher with the same profits, is as easy as sending them all a letter telling them that you are paying them a higher percentage for ebooks. They won’t be sad.

This was the moment when he won, IMO. He's very deftly showing that he knows the publishers are screwing their authors on ebook commissions (which should be much much higher than for paper books). He's also subtly threatening Murdoch by reminding him that he doesn't control the means of production anymore.

[jamesaguilar]

I think he won before the negotiation started. HC didn't have anything to gain by refusing to work with Apple, and potentially had a lot to lose. You cannot win a negotiation where you have no leverage, unless the other party is unaware of your position. But I do agree that this is a great moment in this email exchange.

[6cxs2hd6]

Exactly. While Jobs may have been a great negotiator, this set of emails doesn't really show it. The outcome of this negotiation was clear before it started. All Jobs had to do was be patient and reasonably polite.

[devindotcom]

Yeah, this was the moment for me too. It's like he's saying "Who do you think you're talking to? You think we don't know what you people do?"

[comrade_ogilvy]

Agreed. It demonstrated that Jobs probably understood the numbers approximately as well as those he was negotiating with. It not so subtly alluded to the fact that HC was attempting to seize a bigger slice of the digital pie, without being confrontational.

"Gee, you could make the same amount of money by giving the authors, um, more."

[gavinpc]

Contrast with Murdoch's blunt use of weasel words:

"price-points you don’t like."

"does that give you enough comfort?"

"we are worried more about the absolute holdback of product elsewhere... than we are about the actual haggle over what the price will be" (read, you are haggling)

[OrsenPike]

What made this even more fun to read is knowing it was Murdoch he was twisting and twisting :)