Amazon deal could affect Apple's publishing efforts

Amazon has just backed down a bit on its newspaper publishing program for the Kindle service, and it's possible that it happened as a result of pressure from Apple itself. Amazon has announced a new plan for newspapers and their content that would give them a full 70% royalty split, a deal very similar to the ones Apple is making with all kinds of content developers lately. Originally, Amazon had contracted various newspapers around the world to provide content to its Kindle service under a much more restrictive plan, but as we've reported here before, Apple is now trying to do the same thing for iPad, and that is likely giving newspaper content creators some leverage against Amazon's original agreement.

Under the terms of the new agreement, it may even be possible for newspapers to submit their content to both Amazon and Apple, and that was previously not possible before. That means that next January (when Apple is expected to introduce a second version of the iPad), we may finally see an Apple-run way to get newspapers and even blogs on the device, perhaps through iBooks or another brand new app.

This is all speculative, at this point -- right now, all we know is that Amazon has moved towards a more Apple-like deal in terms of sharing newspaper content. But it certainly seems like a deal to bring more newspapers to the iPad is coming soon.

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