Inkling is set to launch its free e-book publishing platform that aims to compete with Apple's iBooks. The platform, known as Inkling Habitat, enables users to publish cloud-based interactive e-books complete with embedded HD videos and 3D content.
Apple has pushed out an update to iBooks Author, the company's recently-launched publishing tool. The sole change in v1.0.1 is a new end-user agreement, clarifying a controversial portion of the document which initially suggested that any material produced with the software could only be sold through the iBookstore if it was sold at all. "If you charge a fee for any book or other work you generate using this software (a 'Work'), you may only sell or distribute such Work through Apple (e.g., through the iBookstore) and such distribution will be subject to a separate agreement with Apple," one part of the previous EULA read.
Barnes & Noble in an elaborate study of its business gave away plans for a third-generation Nook e-reader. Scant details were given to the New York Times, but it would ship sometime in the spring. The bookseller's recently established pattern suggests it's an E Ink reader like the Nook Simple Touch rather than an Android tablet.
An escaped internal e-mail from Apple CEO Tim Cook intercepted at 9to5 has made allusions to possible insights for 2012 plans to staff. Following the iBooks textbook launch and record quarterly results, Cook was holding a company event at the company's Town Hall theater at 10AM Wednesday. Cook and staff would review what Apple had done, but they would also discuss "some exciting new things going on at Apple," he said.
Apple may have seen as many as 350,000 iBooks textbooks downloaded since launch. Global Equities Research claims to have a special tracking method that showed the relatively brisk take-up. As many as 90,000 copies of iBooks Author had been downloaded at the same time.
Prior to yesterday's textbook announcement, McGraw-Hill had been in talks with Apple since at least June, an AllThingsD interview reveals. "Sitting and listening to all of this, I wish Steve Jobs was here," says McGraw-Hill CEO Terry McGraw. "I was with him in June this past year, and we were talking about some of the benchmarks, and some of the things that we were trying to do together. He should be here. He probably is. This was his vision, this was his idea, and it all had to do with the iPad."
A quick search of the assets for iBooks 2 has all but cemented the likelihood of a 2048x1536 iPad 3 display. Along with including iPhone and regular iPad sizes for its individual images, the new app includes "iPad@2x" artwork for the book cover, BGR noted. Other assets also mention "2x," although Apple sometimes doesn't need to mention which device the resolution is for.
(Updated with event stream) Apple has released the promotional video played at today's press event in New York City. The clip primarily pushes Apple's new textbook format, and the use of iPads in education. It also complains about the state of modern education, though, suggesting that Apple technology will help spark kids' interest in learning.
(Updated with iTunes Connect info) In tandem with the announcement of iBooks Author, Apple has published a support document illustrating some details. The company notes, for instance, that while books can be published to the iBookstore as free or paid titles, they can also be exported as separate PDF, text, or iBooks files for distribution elsewhere, though only for free. Selling on the iBookstore requires registration, and a copy of iTunes Producer; submitting to iTunes U requires an iTunes U website.
Apple committed iOS to education in a big way at its event by launching iBooks 2. We've taken a look at Apple's first dip into a full digital textbook platform and come back fairly impressed. Read ahead for more details and what this might mean for Amazon, Kno, and others hoping to get into e-books for schools.
Following its announcements of iBooks 2 and the iTunes U app, Apple has released iTunes 10.5.3. The update is a relatively minor one, explicitly intended to support the new interactive textbooks made possible by iBooks 2. It may also provide a backend for iTunes U, since the latter app supports buying and downloading online course material.
(Updated with iBooks Author availability) Presenting at today's education event in New York City, Apple has introduced iBooks 2, a major update of the company's reading app. A strong emphasis of the app is on textbooks, which can include things like movies, animations, and interactive elements, such as the ability to zoom into cell structures in a biology book. Books now also support elements like indexes, glossaries, review questions, and turning highlights or glossary items into study cards. Titles can be read in a new fullscreen mode, and a Textbooks section has been added to the iBookstore.
Apple is starting its New York City education event. The company is expected to introduce a new system to ease publishing textbooks and is rumored to be updating Pages and iBooks, including a possible Mac-native iBooks app. Check our real-time coverage for updates as they appear, starting from 10AM Eastern.
Apple could announce Pages '12, an iBooks 2.0, and textbooks rentals at this morning's education event in New York City, claims ZDNet's Jason O'Grady in a Twitter post. The writer cites only a "little birdie" for the information but also mentions that iBooks 2.0 could include a version for Lion, and that all three products will be announced by Roger Rosner, Apple's VP in charge of iWork.
Apple's digital textbook project is internally codenamed "Bliss," an AppleInsider source claims. The site says it actually received the tip earlier in the week, but it wasn't until a Wall Street Journal report corroborated some of the details that it decided to publish the information. This includes the assertion that Roger Rosner, Apple's VP for iWork, is overseeing the project.
Apple's education event in New York City -- scheduled for tomorrow -- will place an emphasis on growing the educational materials available for the iPad, particularly for K-12 students, say two Bloomberg sources claimed to have "knowledge of the announcement." The people also say that Apple's plans will be revealed by senior Internet software VP Eddy Cue, and involve a set of tools making it easier to publish textbooks and other educational content.
Apple's upcoming education event is being "over-hyped," a new Forbes report suggests. The business publication cites for instance an anonymous former Apple executive, who claims that the event "is being blown out of proportion." More critically Forbes says it has interviewed Matt MacInnis, the Inkling CEO used as a source for an Ars Technica piece suggesting Apple is working on a "GarageBand for e-books."
Apple's New York City education event is nothing less than a rethinking of how publishers create e-books as a whole, leaks divulged Monday. One scoop characterized the process to Ars Technica as a "GarageBand for e-books" that would let authors and publishers easily build e-books for iPads and iPhones, including interactive books. iBooks would also start supporting ePub 3, which supports audio and video natively and would make the store much more standards-compatible than Apple's custom take on ePub 2.
Apple has confirmed rumors of a New York City event on Wednesday. The company has asked the media to join them for an "education announcement in the Big Apple" on January 19 Its event will take place at the Guggenheim Museum and puts the Apple logo in a traced-out New York City skyline.
Apple is currently facing a lawsuit in China for allegedly aiding in the sale of illegally published e-books on the iBookstore. The People's Daily reported that nine authors accused Apple of doing nothing to stop bootleggers from publishing 37 works without permission and profiting from it. They contended that Apple owed them the equivalent of nearly $1.9 million in damages, both for letting the publishers through and for profiting from its customary 30 percent cut.
Several more details have emerged about Apple's January event. 9to5Mac, for instance, says it has heard that iTunes staff are in "lockdown mode" ahead of any announcements. MacRumors meanwhile says it has learned of Apple taping promotional interviews with textbook publishing executives, although the site adds that it's uncertain if they relate to January plans.
Apple's mystery New York City event this month is less ambitious than speculated, an outside source corroborated Monday. It would center on publishers in the iBookstore, TechCrunch said, and would be "minor." As such, the event would be more for the publishers themselves and not the public.
Apple is gearing up for a non-hardware special event at the end of January, insiders divulged Monday. The gathering, in New York City rather the Bay Area, had few details from AllThingsD but would be headed up by Internet Software and Services head Eddy Cue. The only proclaimed certainty from the multiple contacts was that it wouldn't involve the iPad 3.
Law firms have motioned this week to represent plaintiffs in class action suits accusing Apple of colluding with publishers. Grant & Eisenhofer claimed to have an insider that revealed "detailed knowledge" in March that gave it reason to pursue the case. A matching filing from another firm also pointed to a source, possibly the same one, that attended an "in-person meeting" with a "very knowledgeable and important confidential source" that was aware of dealings.
Apple late Tuesday gave readers an important update to iBooks (App Store). The 1.5 update catches up to some rival apps with a nighttime mode that switches to gray-on-black for reading with little or no light. Full-screen is also an option for those who want even more text on the screen, such as a children's book.
The European Commission detailed plans Tuesday for a formal investigation into major publishers and Apple as to whether their deal might violate EU antitrust law. Officials will determine whether Hachette Livre, HarperCollins, Penguin, Simon & Schuster, and Macmillan have possibly used Apple to shut out e-book competition from rival stores or publishers. EC staff are worried that the agency model, where the store makes a flat rate and the publishers set the prices, is keeping the price of titles on the iBookstore and elsewhere artificially high.
Nielsen on Friday broke with traditionalism and said it would start factoring e-books into its charts. Its BookScan metric would now include the Amazon Kindle Store, Apple's iBookstore, Barnes & Noble's Nook store, the Google eBookstore, and other stores would now be counted alongside paper titles. It will break out charts into fiction and non-fiction for both combined digital and paper sales as well as digital-only sales.
The newly-released Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson is on track to becoming an Amazon bestseller, a company spokeswoman tells Reuters. "The way things are trending, it could very likely be our top-selling book of the year," says Brittany Turner. No sales numbers have been mentioned so far.
Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs has just gone live as an e-book ahead of its official October 24 unveiling. In unintentional irony, Steve Jobs has arrived first in the US on the Kindle rather than the iBookstore. Apple's store is already making it available in Europe (iBookstore UK).
Apple has posted a pair of updates to key iOS 5 apps in preparation for its iPhone event next week. Those with access to the developer center can now get iWork for iOS beta 4. It's uncertain what changes have surfaced in the new build, although at this stage they will likely be limited to polish.
Apple has dramatically expanded the presence of iTunes in Europe, reports say. In addition to Poland, the iTunes Music Store is now accessible in 11 more European countries. The remainder of the list includes Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.
Apple today launched an official iBookstore Twitter feed. The page promises information about "new releases, exclusive book offers, and more," and is currently up to four posts. Two of these push the Erin Morgenstern book The Night Circus, which is also this week's Pick of the Week sample giveaway at Starbucks.
Seattle-area law firm Hagens Berman on Tuesday filed a class action lawsuit accusing Apple of colluding with publishers to fix iBookstore prices. The suit, submitted in a Northern District of California court by representing members Anthony Petru and Marcus Mathis, accuses Apple of making unfair deals with Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster to artificially keep prices high. In adopting the agency pricing model, where the store takes a fixed cut but lets publishers dictate the price, Apple set terms that forced Amazon to abandon the wholesale model for the Kindle and raise its prices.
Imagine a phrasebook on an iPhone where touching a word brings up the same word in a user's native language, or a children's book where touching a character name shows a picture or video of that character. Apple has submitted a patent that would let apps have this ability backed right into the OS and much more, according to a report from Patently Apple. The idea, if patented, could also have commercial implications.
Apple's iTunes products are on track to contribute approximately $13 billion to the company's revenue by 2013, according to Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry. Although Amazon's Kindle platform may have an edge against iBooks in the current market, the analyst suggests many publishers are beginning to favor ePub format, used by Apple, rather than the Kindle format. The iPad is also said to be the preferred e-book reader among students.
New art assets found inside iOS 5 have revived hopes that Apple was making a 2048x1536 iPad display. Much like the iBooks discovery in January, backgrounds and other parts of the Twitter framework are at the extra-large resolution. The TechUnwrapped source hadn't found it anywhere else in the OS so far, though, suggesting that Apple wasn't ready to commit to releasing a sharper tablet in the near future.
Apple has released iBooks 1.3, an update of its reading app for iOS devices. The main feature of the upgrade is a "read-aloud" option, which on supporting books will let readers hear a narrator, and in some cases see words highlighted as the speech progresses. Similarly books can now automatically play audio or video, which should diminish the need for dedicated apps in the App Store unless a title requires interactive elements.
Apple has finally released iTunes 10.3, which was initially intended to go live yesterday. As expected the software mainly introduces support for iTunes in the Cloud, which automatically pushes purchased apps, books and music to all devices signed in with a given Apple ID. If a device doesn't have the content synced automatically, an option to download purchases is available, assuming necessary material is still hosted at the iTunes Store.
A new law passed last week by France's National Assembly could have repercussions for e-book pricing beyond the country itself. Known just as a "prix du livre numérique" (price of digital books) law, it would update the country's Lang Law from 1981 to require that books with a French publisher be sold in France at no more than a five percent discount below the list price. The requirement is irrespective of the company's origin and would make e-book providers like Amazon, Apple, or Kobo follow French rules even though they were located in North America.
Apple's participation at BookExpo America has been overstated, a spokesperson explains. The event's website cites Apple as an "exhibitor," and the company was initially reported as having a large booth next to Scholastic's. In truth Apple will be meeting with publishers in a private room at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City, the spokesperson clarifies.
Apple will make its first-ever appearance at BookExpo America later this month, reports note. The expo represents the largest industry book fair in the US, and this year is scheduled to run from May 23rd through to the 26th. Apple is said to have secured a large booth in an ideal location: in the same general area as Disney, Random House and Macmillan, and immediately next to Scholastic. Disney's largest individual shareholder is Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who also sits on the Disney board of directors.
iOS app and e-book vendor iFlowReader is shutting down as of May 31st, according to an announcement. "We absolutely do not want to do this, but Apple has made it completely impossible for anyone but Apple to make a profit selling contemporary ebooks on any iOS device," part of the statement reads. "We cannot survive selling books at a loss and so we are forced to go out of business. We bet everything on Apple and iOS and then Apple killed us by changing the rules in the middle of the game."
The Financial Times on Monday further established a possible impasse on iTunes subscriptions through a new interview. Managing director Rob Grimshaw said that direct subscriptions were "the core of our business model" and still didn't want to follow Apple's new rule requiring an iTunes royalty cut with reduced subscriber data. He insisted to Reuters that the FT's parent company Pearson had a "great relationship" with Apple, but he was prepared to drop the iPad to go to Android or another platform if negotiations didn't pan out.
Barnes & Noble executive Marc Parrish in a presentation at GigaOM's Big Data Conference predicted that e-books would dominate book sales in an absolute sense in two years. He expected the industry to "totally shift" sometime within the period based on a combination of rapid device adoption and usage habits. About 18 million e-readers should be sold this year versus just 900,000 in 2009; 30 percent of US readers look at both digital and paper books, according to Forrester and Gartner research.
Apple late Wednesday rolled out a trio of TV ads (below) marking a shift in its iPhone pitch. The new spots all suggest what happens "if you don't have an iPhone" and show what users would be missing. Going without means missing out on the App Store, having "an iPod in your phone," and getting iBooks.
The European Commissionpreliminary UK investigations and suspected the unnamed companies of having "violated EU antitrust rules" by pushing for the agency model in the iBookstore, the Kindle Store and other portals. The structure lets publishers set the pricing and has raised worries of collusion and price fixing that would keep e-books artificially expensive.
Some Random House books are beginning to appear in the US iBookstore, a report says. While only a few are present so far -- Randon House Webster's Pocket Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation being a given example -- the shift indicates that Random House has indeed made concessions and become the last major publisher to support iBooks. On Monday the company switched to an agency model, likely with the iBookstore in mind.
Random House on Monday said it would switch e-book business models in what's likely a sign of a deal for Apple's iBookstore. The publisher planned to switch to an agency model, where it will set the price and a given bookstore takes a flat percentage of the sale. Its switch takes effect Tuesday and will help it "forge new retail relationships" as well as expand its overall e-book sales.
Apple is now blocking people from accessing some iBooks content if they have a hacked device, accounts say. Using greenp0ison to jailbreak iOS 4.2.1 reportedly triggers a check in iBooks 1.2.1, preventing people from loading content. "There is a problem with the configuration of your iPhone," an error message reads. "Please restore with iTunes and reinstall iBooks."
Apple has posted a minor update of iBooks, its e-reader app for the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. The title is now at v1.2.1, but what changes have been made are unclear. Release notes provided on iTunes are identical to those of iBooks 1.2, which launched in December.
