Items tagged with iBooks
For all the ballyhooing over Apple's restrictive license for its iBooks 2 initiative, users seemed eager to flock to Cupertino's virtual book store and download in droves. To wit, All Things D is reporting that more than 350,000 textbooks were downloaded from Apple's iBooks Store within just the first three days of availability, a staggering number it sourced from Global Equities Research. It's hard to tell if those numbers are accurate, especially since Global Equities Research "doesn't much care to discuss" its proprietary tracking system, but even just being in the ballpark would be a huge deal for Apple. It is worth mentioning, however, that many of these could have been free downloads of...
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In what should surprise few, Apple will sell e-books in its iBook store wrapped in its FairPlay digital rights management (DRM, copy protection) technology, according to unnamed sources speaking to the L.A. Times. Consumers may recall that Apple phased out DRM for music in the iTunes store last year, but still has DRM warpping around other content.The majority of publishers are expected to use FairPlay for their e-books. The iBook store will sell e-books in the ePub open standard, but the ePub standard allows for proprietary DRM tools, such as FairPlay, to wrap the content.FairPlay is used to restrict the number of devices that can access purchased content; it's usually set to 5 computers, iPods...
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In the wake of Apple's announcement of the iPad, comes the first salvo in what is probably going to be a drawn out battle. Amazon.com has pulled books published by Macmillan, electronic or not, from its site.Search for authors available from Macmillan, and with the exception, it seems, of library-bound or "bargain books," you won't find Amazon.com pricing for them. You'll find them at "other sellers," but not Amazon.com. You can see it in the above image for Robert Jordan's "Knife of Dreams." Why would Amazon.com do this? It would seem this is hardly in the best interest of customers, and definitely not in the best interest of the site. Well, according to the New York Times, it's all...
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