How Apple and Wiley are just like GM and the LA Times

I’ve been sitting on this story for a few weeks, letting the neurons fire and the connections happen inside my head, and it’s now clear to me that Apple banning Wiley books from the Apple stores because of an apparently unflattering bio of Apple CEO Steve Jobs is identical to GM’s fracas with the LA Times a month or two ago.

Wiley publishes tons of books, including my own Creating Cool Web Sites. In 1987 Wiley published Steve Jobs: The Journey is the Reward, written by Jeff Young. 18 years later, Jeff Young’s written a new book about Steve Jobs with the inflammatory title of iCon - Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business.

Upon hearing about this new title, Jobs says “no way are we helping that publisher” and kicks Wiley’s entire library of best-selling Macintosh titles out of every Apple Store worldwide. Wiley responds…

Well, the people at Apple aren’t stupid, and the folks at Wiley are no fools either. As best they could, Wiley managed to turn the proverbial lemons into lemonade with the following memo that they sent to bookstores…