[austenallred]

Jobs could have set the price at whatever he wanted and they probably would have given in; Amazon was selling them for $9.99 and had already set the low bar, Jobs just had to pick his price and hold it.

Classic negotiation says the other party will give in if he or she can so long as you hold your points as not for debate. Jobs did just that. Brilliant.

[jonny_eh]

It all depends on either party's willingness to walk away. For Apple, books was just one small avenue for potential revenue, for the publishers it's their whole business. If Apple was missing a publisher on iBooks, they'd hardly care. If a book publisher can't get their authors' books on an iPad, those authors might go elsewhere.

[jplmelanson]

> If Apple was missing a publisher on iBooks, they'd hardly care With 4 out of 6 major publisher in, maybe, but that would have been another game with only 1 or 2 in.

[robryan]

Yeah, so what it says is that some of the other publishers should have also held out. By the time it got down to HC it was too late.

[weixiyen]

Not hard to negotiate when you are in the driver's seat. The outcome was already decided before the negotiation even took place based on the given circumstances of both companies.