How is this different from a legacy bookstore? Apple is way more permissive than they are. You can't just walk into a legacy bookstore with a manuscript and say, "Here, sell this."
Major distribution has always meant going through filters. The publishing houses reject most of the stuff that comes through their doors, and bookstores only buy a fraction of the stuff that the publishing houses put out. If you are scandalized that Apple rejects one book out of millions, I can only suppose it's because you aren't familiar with legacy publishing. Traditionally, only a tiny fraction of books ever had a chance to be seen by readers.
(I say this not to defend Apple, per se, but to illustrate how good writers have really got it now if this is considered a subject of outrage. Just ten years ago, getting rejected was the expected outcome of trying to get a book published!)
It's different because via Apple's model, you are holding the bookstore in your hands. There isn't an option to go to a different bookstore down the street, or order a book from a website that will send it to you in the mail. I'm thinking about the "ideal" (to Apple) world in which schools just expect content to be consumed this way (text books are a huge and important market), and it's disgusting.
And yes, you are right. I am admittedly ignorant to the nuances and history of publishing, and am thus probably neglecting to look at this from different angles.
Only by going through the web browser, which apple can't now shut down without alienating too many users. If they thought they could get away with it, they would.
They have actively worked to disable any other store - for example, the kindle app cannot allow purchases or even link to the kindle store online, you have to manually search out links online instead, then download. It's absurd, not in the users' interests, and an abuse of Apple's power over the platform, but that's what Apple require.
Major distribution has always meant going through filters. The publishing houses reject most of the stuff that comes through their doors, and bookstores only buy a fraction of the stuff that the publishing houses put out. If you are scandalized that Apple rejects one book out of millions, I can only suppose it's because you aren't familiar with legacy publishing. Traditionally, only a tiny fraction of books ever had a chance to be seen by readers.
(I say this not to defend Apple, per se, but to illustrate how good writers have really got it now if this is considered a subject of outrage. Just ten years ago, getting rejected was the expected outcome of trying to get a book published!)