Steve Jobs bans books in biography 'revenge'

Apple CEO Steve Jobs is thought to be so incensed about a new biography that he's forced Apple stores worldwide to remove all books by the same publisher as an act of revenge.

According to reports, the book that has Jobs up in arms is a biography called iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business, published by John Wiley and Sons, the firm behind the popular For Dummies series of 'how-to' books.

Apple had previously spent time negotiating with John Wiley and Sons in order to have the book - which is believed to be largely positive about the Cupertino CEO - withdrawn from sale.

When the publisher refused to shelve it, its titles were removed from all of Apple's 104 stores.

A John Wiley and Sons spokeswoman told silicon.com: "Wiley has followed the highest standard of publishing protocol with the publication of this book, which is a balanced business biography and was sent ahead of time to Apple for review. We stand behind our author, Jeffrey Young, 100 per cent.

"We are concerned about how Apple's action affects our authors and customers and would like to resolve this situation so that we can get back to selling books through Apple's retail stores. We have a long-standing good relationship with Apple that we want to maintain," but added that books sold through Apple are a small percentage of sales.

The publicity obviously hasn't done authors William Simon and Jeffrey Young's sales any harm: the biography, which is not released for more than a month, is already 21st in Amazon.com's bestseller list - up from 144th earlier in the day.

Apple, which declined to comment for this article, has had a somewhat fractious relationship with the press in recent months.

The company, which thrives on its ardent fan base, sued several Apple-devoted blog writers after they broke news of Cupertino's products before their official release date.