[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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