[LINK] ebooks on Apple iDevices
Jan Whitaker
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
Sat Jul 12 10:00:22 AEST 2008
From: Fwd: Publishers Lunch
>eBooks for Apple iDevices: Game On
>With the release of Apple's ambitious App Store today, the company
>puts themselves in the ebook business without having to go through
>the messiness of dealing with publishers. Among the free app
>downloads is Fictionwise's eReader software (bundled with free
>copies of the public domain books, Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan of
>the Apes and James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans).
>
>As indicated in the comments section of the TeleRead blog, the
>software was coded by Peanut Press co-founder Lee Fyock and another
>ex-peanut developer, Chris Eplett. Fictionwise's Steve Pendergrast
>notes in the same thread that "in the coming weeks we will have a
>cleanup release that will make selected interface refinements as
>well as make it possible to upload personal content and content
>bought at other retailers or downloaded from free places like
>manybooks that support ereader format, followed by a couple more
>releases that will start filling in some of the advanced features
>that didn't make it into the first release." He also notes, "I just
>want to say up front that version 1.0 of the iPhone eReader isn't
>perfect -- we coded what we could so that we could have it available
>for use on day 1."
>
>Already, PC Magazine hails the app online as one of the best of the
>crop: "One of our top iPhone pet peeves has been that you couldn't
>use it as an eBook reader, something that seems ideal given its
>sprawling screen. It made us long for the days of the PalmPilot,
>where we'd read free novels from Project Gutenberg during our subway
>commutes. Well this is one more barrier to buying an iPhone that's fallen."
>
>Another posting cites a paid Bookshelf app ($.99) that says it
>supports ebooks in formats including mobipocket and html. Meanwhile,
>Richard Curtis reports via eReads.com that "in the future, Adobe and
>Mobipocket will be hitting the iPhone in a powerful way."
>
>At a quick glance this morning in the iTunes App Store, the eReader
>as the No. 33-ranking free app, and a paid version of Frommer's San
>Francisco was the No. 33-ranking paid download. (There is no "books"
>sub-category in the App Store; books are filed within the
>subject-focused categories.)
>
>Often-overlooked among those eager to experiment (or simply
>understand the scale of the potential market here): You don't have
>to go buy an iPhone to play along. The apps work just fine on an
>iPod Touch with updated firmware, connected via wi-fi.
>
>And in Fake Statistics, Time magazine has rousted an anonymous
>source at Amazon they file under the heading of Department of
>Inscrutable Data Points who updates Jeff Bezos's awkward fake Kindle
>fact from early June yet changes the wording: "On a title-by-title
>basis, of the 130,000 titles available on Kindle and in physical
>form, Kindle sales now make up over 12% of sales for those titles."
>
>Why the clause "on a title-by-title basis" instead of the simpler
>"units"? No idea. The previous official declaration was that "of the
>125,000 books available both as a physical book and on Kindle,
>Kindle books already account for over 6 percent of units sold." Bear
>in mind, too, that we've heard a lot of wildly different numbers
>attributed to Amazon "sources" over the past couple of months.
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
business: http://www.janwhitaker.com
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