According to an article in the San Jose Mercury, Apple Computers pulled all books published by John Wiley & Sons from their stores last week. This is the latest fusillade in the battle between Apple and Wiley, about to publish a biography of Steve Jobs. So let’s see how this works: Apple doesn’t like some of what authors Jeffrey S. Young and William L. Simon wrote in iCon Steve Jobs : The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business. So, to punish those two men, Apple restricts the public’s access to Wiley’s technical books of all types, including ones on Apple products and operating systems. It also deprives the authors of the other books benefits that might have derived from sales through Apple outlets. Presumably Apple also takes a slice of the pie when it sells Wiley books, so it’s cutting its own company out in addition to hurting others.

Here’s what Amazon.com has to say about the offending literature:

Lightning never strikes twice, but Steve Jobs has, transforming modern culture first with the Macintosh and more recently with the iPod. He has dazzled and delighted audiences with his Pixar movies. And he has bedeviled, destroyed, and demoralized hundreds of people along the way. Steve Jobs is the most interesting character of the digital age.

What a long, strange journey it has been. With the mainstream success of the iPod, Pixar’s string of hits and subsequent divorce from Disney, and Steve’s triumphant return to Apple, his story is better than any fiction. Ten years after the leading maverick of the computer age and the king of digital cool, crashed from the height of Apple’s meteoric rise, Steve Jobs rose from ashes in a Machiavellian coup that only he could have orchestrated-and has now become more famous than ever.

In this encore to his classic 1987 unauthorized biography of Steve Jobs-a major bestseller- Jeffrey Young examines Jobs’ remarkable resurgence, one of the most amazing business comeback stories in recent years. Drawing on a wide range of sources in Silicon Valley and Hollywood, he details how Jobs put Apple back on track, first with the iMac and then with the iPod, and traces Jobs’ role in the remarkable rise of the Pixar animation studio, including his rancorous feud with Disney’s Michael Eisner.
* Written with insider scoops and no-holds-barred style
* Based on hundreds of highly unauthorized interviews with Jobs’ nearest and dearest
* New information on the acrimonious parting between Eisner and Jobs, the personal vendetta behind the return to Apple, and the future of iPod and the music industry

Must be those inside scoops that Apple doesn’t want on its pie.

Send comments to Georganna at Writer’s Edge.