AppleInsider | Random House books come to Apple's iBookstore for iPad, iPhone

Well, of course they have.

AppleInsider: Random House may soon join iBooks -

Well of course. Hell, agency model was the only issue between them in the first place.

No iBooks For You - Latest iBooks Version Won't Work On Jailbroken Phones

NYTimes: "Apple's e-reader app iBooks received an update last week, boasting a fairly typical set of changes: better stability, better layout, and a connection to AirPrint. But according to some reports, this latest version can cause problems for those trying to open e-books on jailbroken iPhones. ... "

iBooks: No iTunes When It Comes to Dominating the Market

PW: "Want an e-book version of the nation’s bestselling nonfiction hardcovers? Don’t bother looking on the iBookstore. Apple still hasn’t struck a deal with Random House, publisher of George W. Bush’s Decision Points and Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken. For now, iPad users who want to get any of Random House’s bestsellers -- which also include John Grisham’s The Confession and Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo -- need to visit Apple’s App Store and download the free application for the Kindle or the Nook. ... "

Apple Updates iBooks - Adds AirPrint, Collections

iPad Atlas - CNET Reviews: "Apple has updated its popular digital-book reader iOS App, iBooks, now version 1.2, to include support for AirPrint, PDF and notes printing, Collections, and new fully illustrated children's books and art books available for download in the iBookstore. Apple's iBooks allows you to download digital versions of your favorite books directly to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch. iBooks 1.2 includes the ability to print notes or PDFs using Apple's newly released AirPrint functionality. With everything going digital, it's nice to see you can still get your notes back on paper. iBooks 1.2 also includes new functionality (must have iOS 4.2.1 installed) to allow more words per page by automatically hyphenating text."

Apple Approved for iBookstore in Canada

The news comes per this self important statement from The Honourable James Moore, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages, who "today announced that Apple Canada has been granted approval under the Investment Canada Act to establish iBookstore Canada. 'Our Government is committed to strengthening Canada's economy through all its sectors, especially arts and culture,' said Minister Moore. 'Apple has demonstrated how iBookstore Canada represents new opportunities for Canadian authors and publishers, and I have determined that this investment will be of net benefit to Canada.'" The Honourable Mr. Moore has evidently been pondering this complex question since July, when Apple made its initial application. Good work if you can get it.

Jouve Group Announces Direct Online eBook Conversion for Apple’s iBookstore

Press Release via Business Wire: "PARIS--As the global leader in digital eBook conversion, Jouve has developed an innovative online client platform for Apple’s iBookstore, making its industrial conversion solutions available to publishers of all sizes. A high-performance digital conversion process that’s personalized and 100% compliant with Apple specifications. Jouve now offers publishers an easy way to directly convert their catalog to standard or enhanced eBooks for the iBookstore. The iBookstore is included with the free iBooks app available for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. This simple solution fits the digital needs of all types of publishers, with production costs starting from just $19.99 per book. ..."

Smaller Australian Publishers want in to Apple’s iWalled Book Garden

iTWire: "Yesterday, Apple announced a list of who’s in at the Australian iBookstore, and by virtue of doing so, announced a list of who’s currently out of the Australian iBookstore too, causing a furore among smaller publishers who feel miffed at thus far being left out of the crunchy kingdom and away from all its digital iCitizens, and right before Christmas, too!"

Apple Australia Opens iBookstore Floodgates

Delimiter: "Up until now, the Australian version of Apple’s eBook marketplace, the iBookstore, has been fairly sparsely populated compared with rivals. But today it appears as if the company has added half a dozen major new publishers to its catalogue in a major move. 'Today, thousands of titles from both major and independent publishers, including Macmillan, Hachette Book Group, Hardie Grant, HarperCollins Publishers, Murdoch Publishers and Wiley, are now available on the Australian iBookstore,' the company said in a statement."

The iBookstore Six Months Post-Launch: Not Impressive at All

An informed bystander comments: "It's been over six months since the release of the iPad on April 3rd, and the simultaneous launch of iBooks and the iBookstore, which promised to give Amazon's Kindle and Kindle Store a run for its money. I figured that this would be a good time to see just how the iBookstore has progressed. The answer, in a word: poorly ... very poorly."

Apple's iBooks Censorship - Steve Jobs the New Tipper Gore?

From Jessie Kunhardt and Alexandra Carr, Huffington Post:

As Apple has gotten the chance to control more and more content with its ever-expanding app store the popular company has shown itself to be somewhat tyrannical and more than a little prudish when it comes to censorship. Books and book apps have gotten caught up in the storm of arbitrary rejections and strange censorship as Apple decides which make the cut into the apparently exclusive app store and iBookstore. Though the reasons for the censorship vary -- from gay themes to 'objectionable' language -- the majority of these books and book apps have one thing in common: Apple reversed the censorship after being publicly derided across the Internet for their decision.

Dianna Dilworth at eBookNewser hits the nail on the head:

Apple ... banned Tom Bouden's comic book adaptation of the Oscar Wilde play The Importance of Being Earnest because of kissing men. CNET editor David Carnoy's thriller Knife Music was banned because the word "fuck" is used a few times. Both were eventually allowed in.

My personal favorite was an eReader app called "Eucalyptus," [offering] access to Project Gutenberg's entire catalog of copyright-free books [which] was rejected because it included the Kama Sutra. The app was accepted after Apple got bad press. Who would have thought that Apple would be the new Tipper Gore?

New Virginia Quarterly Review iPad Edition

From Publishers Weekly:

The Virginia Quarterly Review has created a digital edition specifically tailored for the iPad. The literary magazine from the University of Virginia has become one of the first magazines to create such an edition and sell it directly through Apple's iBookstore. A free 29-page sample of the magazine's current issue can be downloaded here. VQR is selling its digital editions for $3.99, as compared to the $14.99 price for the print issue.

Speaking to the magazine's push to get into the iBookstore, managing editor Kevin Morrissey said one attractive feature with Apple's storefront is the fact that it supports ePub. "It is important to us that we distribute VQR in a manner that is open, unencumbered by the limitations of digital rights management and patents," Morrissey explained. The magazine also created the ePub edition in-house which developer Waldo Jaquith said "is a testament to the simplicity of the format." Jaquith added that creating the digital editions proved economical for the magazine. "Rather than building a stand-alone app for the iPad, as so many other magazines have done, we were able to leverage our existing website content and create this version at a fraction of the cost of a proprietary app."

More Apple WWDC iBooks Noise - Syncing, PDFs, and Agnosticism

From MobilitySite:

Slipped into all the noise of the iPhone 4 announcement, Steve Jobs had some interesting [comments] concerning the future of iBooks. As we all assumed he would, he followed the normal Apple pattern of announcing expanded functionality for a product announced in the previous big event. In this case Apple is opening up iBooks to PDF reading, annotations and proper bookmarking, which are very important steps in the evolution of the product.

Even more interesting is that Apple is moving iBooks squarely into position to compete with the Kindle head on. For one thing, they are porting the iBooks functionality to the iPhone as well, and I assume the iPod Touch if not now then in the near future when they release iOS 4 for that device. This gives at least a hint that Apple is buying into the prevailing business models for other ebook vendors such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble, that ebook reader software should be agnostic, and not be tied down to a single device. Whether this means that we will see Apple providing the iBooks software for Windows Phone 7 or Android, I don’t know yet…however I am almost certain we will at least see iBooks Reader for Mac and Windows. Remember that Apple’s media empire didn’t really get going until they provided iTunes for Windows.

In addition, Apple is taking the incredibly important step of making books you buy from the iBookstore load and sync on ALL devices running iBooks. So when you close your book on your iPad, it opens to the same place on your iPhone. This mimics Kindle’s WhisperSync technology which would be essential if Apple means to seriously compete with Amazon in ebooks, especially since B&N PROMISES this ability, but their forums are filled with comments that it has yet to work. If Apple can sync iBooks between the iPad and iPhone before you can sync B&N Reader between them, or between a Nook and your iPhone for that matter, then that will give Apple a major advantage. ...

Apple Grabs 22% of eBook Market for Past 65 Days, Announces iBooks Enhancements

All of this from the San Francisco Apple Worldwide Developers Conference as reported by AppleInsider's Sam Oliver:

Apple revealed that iBooks will allow for wireless syncing across devices, including purchased content and user-added content such as bookmarks, notes and highlighting. The wireless capabilities will be available free of charge for iBooks users on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

[Steve Jobs also announced a new version of the iBooks app] due out later this month that will add new features that will let users highlight text, paste sticky notes, bookmark pages, and add bookmarks to the title's table of contents.

[Jobs said that the new iBooks would] add support for PDFs, a feature widely requested for its e-book platform. The new update will be available later this month, and will feature a separate bookshelf for users to view their PDF.

In the first 65 days [of the iBookstore], Jobs said users have downloaded more than 5 million books -- amounting to 2.5 eBooks for every iPad sold and giving Apple a near-instant 22% slice of the eBook market. Five of the six largest publishers in the world are on board with iBooks, releasing content for the Apple-supported format.

Note this useful analysis from the Nieman Journalism Lab's Joshua Benton:

In the two months since the iPad launched — and with it Apple’s new ebook platform, iBooks — Apple has taken over a remarkable 22 percent of the ebook market. (That’s based on data from five of the six major publishing companies; the sixth, Random House, isn’t on the iPad.)

In one sentence, Jobs revealed more hard data about ebook sales than Amazon has in 2.5 years of the Kindle. (I exaggerate, but only slightly. Amazon still hasn’t unveiled any hard numbers on Kindle device or ebook sales. Maybe this will prompt them.)

Those Apple ebook sales are based on the 2 million iPads sold, which are the only Apple devices that have iBooks. But iBooks is coming to the iPhone and iPod touch later this month — around the same time Jobs said the 100 millionth iPhone OS device will be sold. In other words, iBooks’ momentum is about to get punched up.

Apple iPhone 4G to Have Easy Interface With iBookstore

Steve Jobs will unveil the iPhone 4G at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco on Monday. From The Telegraph:

... Now iPhone users will be able to buy and download novels from the Apple bookshop on to their iPhone. Amazon already offers a Kindle app for the iPhone and iPod touch, a long with a far wider selection of titles, but the roll-out of Apple's own ebook store to the iPhone underlines Apple's commitment to making digitised content more widely available across all of its platforms. ...

Apple Opens iBookstore to Self-Published Authors

Details from ars technica:

To take advantage of the service, you must first have an International Standard Book Number (ISBN) for each work you wish to make available for sale. Obtaining an ISBN isn’t as difficult a process you might think; it can take as little as two weeks. Second, you must have a copy of the work in ePUB format. There are a variety of different ways to convert text into ePUB format, many of which are free (a list can be found on the LexCycle website). You must also have a valid iTunes Store account as well as a US tax ID.

The last requirement is that you, as the author, must have access to a modern Mac. In order to participate, you must encode your eBook with Apple’s software, which needs an Intel Mac running at least OS X 10.5. The encoding process most likely adds Apple’s very own brew of DRM to the book, ensuring that your writings won't be distributed outside of the iPhone or iPad.

MacLife also has something.

Google Editions

CNET UK: "Google Editions will launch this summer, and looks set to start a new chapter in the ebook market. The browser-based ebook store will offer ebooks that work on any device, which could spell trouble for the proprietary systems offered by Apple, Amazon and Sony. Ebooks bought from Editions will work on devices from phones to a netbooks to any one of the range of ebook readers already on the market. Other ebook stores are often tied to the store's own device, as with the market-leading Amazon Kindle, and Apple's forthcoming iBook store for the iPad. Google is planning for Editions to launch by July, although it's likely that will be a US launch date."

Blog Kindle has as many details as are currently available about the program - a very good rundown.