David is writing for The Unofficial Apple Weblog the best, in my opinion, Apple site around.
David expounds about the limited number of books available in the iBookstore and deplores the lack of books from Random House and its imprints – many of which are on his reading list. He ends up by saying:
… 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. … I was honestly looking forward to having my iPad become my main source for books, but I became disappointed at the lack of availability and prices of what I wanted to read. I would love it if the iBookstore really did for books what the iTunes Store has done for music, making it so I can get anything I want, anytime, at a fair price. But unless Apple takes some giant steps to fix the things that are broken with the iBookstore, it will continue to be a dismal failure.
Check out the full article for the details. One thing he doesn’t mention is that if you buy and DRMed book from the iBookstore you are restricted to only Apple equipment for reading purposes. This is the main reason why I haven’t bought a single book from the store and why I won’t buy any in the future. At least with Kobo or Amazon I can read DRMed books on almost any hardware platform I want to use.
So what?
You can simply download Kindle application to iPad and have the best of two worlds. Not that I think that LCD is best for reading, but we are talking about book choice here. While you are installing a third party application, why limit yourself to just iBooks and Kindle app? There is Baen, Smashwords, …
What really bothers me as a Canadian buyer of ebooks, and I really do buy a lot of ebooks; in fact, I have been buying a lot of Ebooks from a number of sites for some time now, ever since my Palm T/X days is this: I want to buy iBookstore books but why would I? First they have a paltry selection and secondly, why would I buy from them when they’re cheaper on Amazon and I don’t have to pay HST? Come on, how difficult can it be? Publishers are crazy if they can’t see the merit of Kindle pricing @$9.99. Seriously, Get Serious!!!
It’s too soon to make the judgment that the iBookStore has failed. Today is October 14; just two days ago TeleRead reported that O’Reilly Media has placed 800 of their books in the iBookStore. And of course, O’Reilly Media is always at least one giant leap ahead of most other publishers.
A few days ago, I added my ebook (==50 Benefits of Ebooks==) to the iBookStore — priced at $ 3.99. It’s not that simple to add your book: the EPUB that validates perfectly according to the IDPF standards, still can get rejected by the iBookStore for some missing metadata. So it’s going to take publishers and independent authors a little while to figure this all out.
Also note that Apple is offering an option for publishers to sell their EPUB ebooks without DRM.
The iBookStore will catch on and be a winner: just give it a little time.
TUAW is right. Unless we get surprised at the upcoming Oct. 20 event, there’s little evidence that Apples care much about their iBookstore. They’ve yet to create a Mac version of iBooks, much less one that is as multi-platform as the Kindle. They have nothing like the ability I have to download ebooks for and synch my reading and notes between my Mac, Kindle, iPhone and iPod touch, all almost effortless and in a few seconds.
I’m as worried as anyone that Amazon will make their already roughly 70% dominance of the ebook market even greater. But as a writer, it’s hard to find anyone else who’s making much effort to compete: not Apple, not Sony and not even B&N. And no one, except perhaps Ingram Digital, seems to be trying to create a market for ebooks that’s as open and free as that for printed books.
I’m particularly impressed with the flurry of tools Amazon has released in the last few weeks, including an export plug-in for InDesign that, for a 0.9 version, works quite well. My only complaints are that it chokes on large numbers of styles and generates the ugliest linked table of contents on the planet. Done right, I’ll let publishers create once in InDesign and output in print, epub and the Kindle’s mobi format.
Winner tend to have advantages. Given Amazon’s lion’s share of the ebook market, the best move I can make right now as a writer is to create a mobi version of my books directly for Amazon (giving me full control of how it looks) and let Smashwords generate and handle the other 30% of the market with their Meatgrinder conversion engine. It’s just not worth my while to fiddle with one epub version for Apple, another for Sony and a third for B&N, including the hassles of separate contracts with each. I wish that weren’t so, but it is.
And what I am seeing as a writer is probably similar to what large publishers are seeing. You get more bang for the buck creating ebooks for Amazon’s proprietary format than you do creating ebooks in epub for the rest of the market. That’s why, as that TUAW writer discovered, you find more ebooks on Amazon and often at better prices. There’s an economy of scale creating books for Amazon that you don’t find anywhere else.
–Michael W. Perry, author of Untangling Tolkien
@Name(required) [sic!]
You have read it backwards. David didn’t say he doesn’t want to read on his iPad, he said he doesn’t want to buy from the iBooks store.
Winograd makes accurate and true points in his assessment of the state of the iBookstore today. But labelling it as a failure after a few months is just silly and commercially naive.
Apple appears to have it’s concentration elsewhere right now and their strategy for the iBookstore is just not working. That is clear.
But this whole eBook market is i it’s embryonic stage and there is only one certainty imho and that is that it will all change in the next two or three years.
Nothing has been won or lost. No one has failed or triumphed. It is a work i progress with huge opportunities for those willing to dive into the market.
“I was honestly looking forward to having my iPad become my main source for books, but I became disappointed at the lack of availability and prices of what I wanted to read.”
What is he talking about here? Is he including Kindle App and Stanza and B&N apps? How about the new Bluefire Reader?
He seems to just be trying to look smart making a sweeping generalization about something he obviously has not spent much time investigating beyond some brochures Apple sent him about iBooks a few months ago?
Of course it’s a bust. After all, it is Apple’s fault we have the Agency 5 and they ridiculously high prices. So I’m thinking this is consumers way of getting revenge. Way to go by not buying eBooks from Apple via iBooks.