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Open Air sees e-book sales success by publishing in the App Store
Paid Content is a fantastic blog for freelance and office professionals that covers paid-content business models for furthering the reach of your work. They've just published a useful interview with Jon Feldman, the CEO and founder of e-book publisher Open Air, about what it takes to get an e-book published in iOS. Open Air sells exponentially more titles through the App Store than it does via the iBookstore, between 10 to 30 times as much depending on the situation. Originally the company just published their books through the App Store, but when iBooks Author was launched, the company adapted its titles for the new market. What they thought would be a massive jump in sales turned out to be just another smaller market. Although iBooks Author allows publishers to make highly interactive e-books, consumer perception is that an app will be more interactive than an e-book. Accordingly when a customer visits their website and is given the option of an app or e-book version of a title they tend to move towards the app version, even when they feature similar content. According to Feldman, "My advice for publishers would be to carve out a digital-first division that would allow them to play in that space without having to think about Barnes & Noble or a shelf or a piece of paper at all." Head over to Paid Content for the rest of Feldman's advice. It's a wonderful look at the way small publishing dynamics are changing as the digital economy continues to grow.
Eddy Cue: Steve Jobs picked 'Winnie the Pooh' as the iBooks freebie, also came up with the idea for 'page curls'
While testifying in court last week, Apple executive Eddy Cue had a number of interesting tidbits regarding the origins of the iBookstore, namely that Steve Jobs was initially opposed to the idea, but quickly hopped on board after Cue convinced him that the iPad would make the perfect e-reader. Today, Cue took the stand once again where he divulged some more interesting tidbits regarding Apple's foray into the e-book space. At one point during today's proceeding, an Apple attorney asked Cue a number of questions about Jobs and his involvement in Apple's iBooks initiative. Once again, All Things D was there covering the trial and relayed the following nuggets of information. The "page curls" in the iBook app, which show up when you flip an iBook's page? That's Steve Jobs' idea. It was Jobs' idea to pick ""Winnie-the-Pooh" as the freebie book that came with every iBook app. Not just because Jobs liked the book, Cue said, but because it showed off iBook's capabilities: "It had beautiful color drawings, that had never been seen before in a digital book." Jobs was also specific about the book he used to show off the iBook during his initial iPad demo in January 2010. He picked Ted Kennedy's "True Compass" memoir, because the Kennedy family "meant a lot to him," Cue said. Indeed, Cue's testimony serves to underscore that you'd be hard-pressed to find another CEO in the annals of tech that was as product- and detail-oriented as Jobs. Apple's trial with the DOJ is slated to end this week.
Steve Jobs didn't want an iBookstore until Eddy Cue convinced him
During Apple's e-book price-fixing case on Thursday, Apple executive Eddy Cue testified that Steve Jobs initially wasn't interested in getting into the e-book market at all. Lucky for us, All Things D was on hand to capture all of the courtroom details describing the backstory behind Apple's eventual foray into the e-book market. Cue explained that when he first approached Jobs and broached the topic of getting Apple into the e-book business, Jobs wasn't on board. "He wasn't interested," Cue explained. "Steve never felt that the Mac or the iPhone were ideal reading devices. In the case of the phone, the screen was smaller, and in the case of the Mac, you had this keyboard and device, and it didn't feel like a book." The iPad, however, was a game changer. When Cue first began using the iPad in the months before Apple publicly unveiled the device, he immediately recognized the potential for it to become a wildly successful and popular e-reader. So with the iPad unveiling steadily approaching, Cue in the fall of 2009 said that he approached Jobs yet again with the idea of getting into the e-book market. And so I went to Steve and told him why I thought [the iPad] was going to be a great device for e-books ... and after some discussions he came back and said, you know, I think you're right. I think this is great, and then he started coming up with ideas himself about what he wanted to do with it and how it would be even better as a reader and store. Cue noted that Jobs finally came around to the idea of an iBookstore in November 2009. Now bear in mind that Apple first introduced the iPad in January 2010, meaning that Cue, Apple's chief content negotiator, was left with little to no time to secure deals with major publishing companies as Jobs wanted to demo Apple's new e-book initiative on stage for the world to see. Of particular interest was Cue's testimony detailing how he was especially motivated to secure content deals ahead of the iPad's introduction on account of Jobs' worsening health. Steve was near the end of his life when we were launching the iPad, and he was really proud of it. He was working hard on it. I believed that iBooks was going to be a tremendous feature of the product. People were going to love it; our customers were just going to go wild about iPad and iBooks, and I wanted to be able to get that done in time because it was really important to him ... I like getting my work done and I pride myself on being successful, but this had extra meaning to me. Now aside from the usual intrigue typically associated with discovering what goes on behind the scenes at 1 Infinite Loop, I find this whole story noteworthy for two reasons. First, this isn't the first time we've heard a story about Cue successfully convincing Jobs to move Apple in a particular direction. During last summer's Apple / Samsung trial, emails came to light which revealed that Cue had been pushing Jobs to release an iPad with a smaller form factor as early as 2010. In a January 2011 email sent out to members of Apple's executive team, Cue wrote: I believe there will be a 7-inch market and we should do one. I expressed this to Steve several times since Thanksgiving and he seemed very receptive the last time. I found email, books, Facebook and video very compelling on a 7''. Web browsing is definitely the weakest point, but still usable. Apple would of course go onto announce the iPad mini in October 2012. Second, the story provides further proof that Apple is teeming with talented employees and that the company is poised to succeed even in the absence of Jobs. While Jobs was a visionary without compare, the stories above illustrate that Jobs sometimes needed a bit of convincing before deciding where the "puck was going." In short, the notion that an Apple without Jobs is destined for failure is ridiculous. Indeed, one of the reasons Jobs was able to successfully bring Apple back from the brink of bankruptcy was precisely because he surrounded himself with top-tier talent. To that end, this old quote from Jobs regarding his hiring philosophy is worth a mention: ... you're well advised to go after the cream of the cream. That's what we've done. You can then build a team that pursues the A+ players. A small team of A+ players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players. That's what I've tried to do.
Apple announces iBooks for OS X
Apple has announced that iBooks for OS X will be included as part of OS X 10.9 Mavericks. Users will be able to access all 1.8 million iBooks on the Mac. The iBooks for OS X interface will be a two-page layout by default and be totally flat, which means there will be no skeuomorphic pages. Users will also be able to add notes and highlights, with the notes being usable as study cards. These notes, highlights, bookmarks and more will be synced with your iOS device. iBooks for OS X will also sync your reading progress, so you can stop reading on your Mac and pick up right where you left off on your iOS device. You can read more about iBooks for OS X on Apple's Mavericks preview web page.
Apple brings iBooks to the Mac
iBooks has been limited to iOS devices for the past three years, but that's changing today: as of OS X Mavericks, Apple is bringing its reading app to the Mac. The software preserves all the features of its mobile counterparts, including highlights, notes and textbooks. Naturally, you can shop for books from the app as well. Apple only gave us a brief preview of iBooks at WWDC, but we can already say it's a more than welcome update for those who don't stop reading just because they're at their desks. Follow all of our WWDC 2013 coverage at our event hub. %Gallery-190868%
Apple argues it was 'indifferent' to Amazon's e-book pricing
Apple's trial with the US government over allegations that Apple was the "ringleader" in a conspiracy to increase the price of e-books on the iBookstore is a doozy. The Justice Department on Monday laid out its case with a series of 81 slides which it claims show that Apple ran afoul of anti-trust law by using questionable tactics to rope five big time publishers into the agency model of e-book pricing. One of the publishing houses involved in the case is the Penguin Group. While they settled their own dispute with the DOJ already, company CEO David Shanks took the stand on Tuesday and said that Apple was more concerned with securing the deal it wanted than with the existing contracts publishers already had with Amazon. "It was fairly clear that they could take or leave being in the book business," Shanks said on the stand. "If they couldn't get it on their terms, they weren't going to take the jump into being in books." Furthermore, Apple lawyer Kevin Saul testified that Apple was "indifferent" to the types of deals publishers had with Amazon. This is an important point to the extent that Apple is arguing that it wasn't sneakily trying to stick it to Amazon by getting publishers to adjust their existent contracts with Amazon. On the contrary, Saul explained, Apple simply wanted to ensure that Amazon couldn't undercut Apple's own pricing. Consequently, Apple's contracts included a "Most Favored Nation" clause which would have allowed Cupertino to match any prices set by competitors. The DOJ, of course, disagrees and contends that Apple's plan all along was to get rid of Amazon's US$9.99 pricepoint for e-books. What is arguably sneaky, however, is an email exchange between Saul and an executive from Wiley. In the email, Saul is asked how Wiley would make money with the agency model if Apple would consistently be matching Amazon's low prices. Saul answered that they could potentially withhold books from the nation's largest retailer. When the aforementioned email was brought to light in court, Saul answered that he was merely tossing around options for the Wiley executive to ponder, not laying out strict contract terms that Apple required. On another note, and just as interesting, is that Apple used the impending launch of the iPad as leverage to get publishers on board. CNET reports that with only a few weeks to finalize deals before Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad, negotiations went into overdrive. They held initial meetings with the companies in December but started negotiating in earnest in January. Saul said he spent "well over 100" hours negotiating with the publishers, spending about 12 hours a day working on the issue until the deals were signed. He was expected to have agreements a week before the iPad launch so Apple CEO Steve Jobs could get the wording into the final draft of his iPad keynote slides. ... "A very effective negotiating strategy was basically telling them the train was leaving the station," Saul said. This case is only bound to get more interesting as more evidence is introduced, not to mention the fact that Tim Cook and Eddy Cue will be taking the stand in the coming weeks as well.
E-books not growing much in Canada, slightly better in the US
A new study from BookNet Canada notes that the e-book market may be in trouble. Paperback books, says BookNet, made up 58 percent of all purchases last year, with hardcover taking 24 percent. But e-books were only 15 percent of total sales last year, a figure that's down overall from 2012's first quarter, where they made up 17.6 percent. In other words, e-books are selling, but they're hardly taking over the market. Now, those numbers reflect sales in Canada. In the US, e-books make up 22 percent of the market, so the numbers are higher here. But still, given how ubiquitous e-books now are, it's surprising to not see them taking more of the market. BookNet says buyers cite the convenience of shopping for other items at the same time and pricing as two reasons they're still looking for books in brick-and-mortar stores rather than online. Finally, Apple's iPad only made its way up to number three on the list of the most popular e-book readers in Canada. The Kobo e-book reader was the most popular up in the Great White North, followed by Amazon's Kindle and then Apple's tablet.
Daily Update for May 9, 2013
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
Apple wins "iBooks" trademark case
Have you ever heard of Black Tower Press? Back in 2011, the small New York publisher of sci-fi and fantasy books filed a trademark suit claiming that it had the rights to use the term "iBooks." Yesterday a New York court ruled in Apple's favor, stating that the publisher's mark -- ibooks -- and Apple's electronic bookstore trademark would not be confused by consumers. Black Tower obtained the "ibooks" mark in 2006 when it purchased another publishing company that had used the term for an imprint selling sci-fi and horror novels. However, Black Tower never obtained a registered trademark for "ibooks," nor did the predecessor company. Apple did obtain registered trademarks. In 1999, it obtained a license from a software company to use the term "iBook" to describe a line of colorful clamshell laptops. In 2010, Apple bought the other company's trademark outright prior to the introduction of the iBookstore and the iBooks app. US District Judge Denise Cote noted that "ibooks" was descriptive of books sold on the internet, and that Black Tower had only acquired distinctive meaning in using the word and its lightbulb logo (see image above) together. Those interested in reading the full decision can check it out below. iBooks
Rumor: Amazon's Goodreads purchase cancelled a possible Apple partnership
The Wall Street Journal says that before Amazon's purchase of the Goodreads service earlier this year, Apple was planning to possibly integrate the social reading-recommendation service into its own iBookstore. Apple and Goodreads, says the WSJ, had been talking for a year or more about combining Goodreads' social ratings for books into the iBooks app directly, but of course Amazon's purchase put the kibosh on any such team-up. Amazon purchased Goodreads for what could be close to $200 million, and purportedly plans to use the service and its user reviews to help sell e-books on the Kindle bookstore. As for Apple, it's hard to say just what such a partnership would have looked like. Obviously Apple is willing to integrate partners in certain products, especially on iOS, where both Twitter and Facebook have seen fairly major social integration. But on the other hand, Apple's also very careful about mixing up brands, which is probably why any possible Goodreads partnership took as long as it did to come to light. Apple's seen a lot of success with iBooks, and so the company might be leery about including anyone else's content on that store. Nevertheless, thanks to the Amazon acquisition, integrating Goodreads on the iBookstore is no longer a possibility. Currently, users can review books on iBooks in exactly the same way they can review apps in the App Store, and that solution may be good enough for Apple for now.
Apple bans Brian K. Vaughn's Saga #12 comic book due to graphic sex scenes [Updated]
Update: It turns out this is not true -- the ban came from the book's digital publisher, Comixology, not Apple itself. Comixology has since rescinded the ban. Original Post: I never thought I'd write two stories in one day about Apple attacking the comic book industry over adult content, but that's indeed what's happening today. The latest controversy comes from writer Brian K. Vaughn, who writes a terrific series called Saga. The just-released issue number 12 of the book contains "two postage stamp-sized images of gay sex," according to Vaughn in a press release, and as a result, Apple has officially banned it from the App Store, commanding various comic publishers to not carry the book digitally for sale on the iPhone or iPad. Vaughn says he could have considered changing the images, but "everything we put into the book is there to advance our story, not (just) to shock or titillate," so the material is staying in. In the meantime, he says, you can find the book at any brick-and-mortar comic book store, on Image Comics' website outside of Apple's marketplace, or even (and here's the real laugher) in Apple's iBookstore, where apparently the company is less lenient than it is for third-party publishers. Obviously, these images and this book aren't appropriate for children, so it makes sense to be cautious about how the images are shown. But Saga is hardly pornography -- it's an excellent, well-written and insightful piece of art. Apple's censorship on this is at least more timely than some of its other attacks on "adult" material, but still, the fact that Apple is trying to block specific content from its store for arbitrary reasons is disturbing.
iBook Lessons: Why the Kindle App is still the best reader on iOS
iBook Lessons is a continuing series about e-book writing and publishing. The important thing about e-books is this: the reader matters a lot less than the content. Over time, I've found myself using iBooks less and less and less, as I now turn almost exclusively to Kindle for my iPad reading. There are several reasons for this. First, I can read my Kindle content on nearly any platform you can think of. Second, Kindle books are cheap. The same tech e-book that costs $36 on iTunes may show up up for $16.20 on Amazon. Amazon is deeply invested in the "reader thing". Last week, they acquired Goodreads, a popular site for sharing reviews and recommendations. The press release quoted Amazon VP Russ Grandinetti, who said "Amazon and Goodreads share a passion for reinventing reading. Goodreads has helped change how we discover and discuss books and, with Kindle, Amazon has helped expand reading around the world. In addition, both Amazon and Goodreads have helped thousands of authors reach a wider audience and make a better living at their craft. Together we intend to build many new ways to delight readers and authors alike." You can anticipate that Amazon will start incorporating Goodread's net of recommendations into their reader hardware and software sometime in the near future. In the absence of an OS X iBook reading tool, some developers are tentatively testing out the waters. Latest to the scene is developer NeoMobili, whose Bookinist website just recently went live. I've signed up to get notified when they launch, and hopefully I'll soon get a chance to test out the promised public beta. Obviously, third parties will not be able to provide reading capabilities for DRM'ed e-books, providing another strike against buying them from the iBookstore instead of Kindle. No one is ever going to argue that Amazon has set new standards of excellence for their software. My OS X Kindle app is functional at best, ugly at worst. But in the end, it's the book that you're reading that creates the end-user experience, not how prettily the pages turn.
TUAW Bookshelf: Markdown by David Sparks & Eddie Smith
Markdown (US$9.99, iPad only) by David Sparks and Eddie Smith, offers a terrific introduction to the Markdown plain text-to-HTML conversion spec. Originally created to provide an easier way to produce web content, Markdown is now an indispensable tool for developers and bloggers. This intro text surveys Markdown and offers a reference and tutorial for both those who are new to the technology and those who want to improve their Markdown skills. The core subject is actually quite small, so the authors have wisely focused on the bigger picture -- how do you use Markdown on various platforms and tools. The book consists of text (130 pages) and screen casts (with over an hour and a half of video and an hour of audio interviews). Yes, the download is enormous -- 850 MB. The book is well-organized and clearly written. The videos were pertinent and helpful -- they felt as if I had taken home my own little personal tech conference. Markdown is not, in and of itself, a big topic. You can easily search for and find cheat sheets. If you're that kind of person, this isn't the book for you. What this field guide offers is a really pleasant introduction from experienced experts, who give you a warm and knowledgeable overview of the topic with a lot of depth. I don't think anyone will regret the purchase price of 10 bucks. The book is available in both OS X and PDF formats from the author website. I reviewed only the iBooks version.
Siri trick turns iBooks into audiobooks
Have you ever purchased an iBook and then wished that you had an audiobook version of it? Macworld UK's Mark Hattersley wrote a wonderful post today on how to use Siri Dictation to speak either a portion or all of the text from an iBook. To begin setting up Siri to read your books aloud to you, go to Settings > General, then scroll down to Accessibility. Tap Speak Selection, slow down the speaking rate a bit to make Siri's reading somewhat more natural sounding, and then turn on Highlight Words so that you can see where Siri is reading in the iBook. Now head over to the iBooks app and open the book you want to hear. Tap the aA icon at the top right of the iBook display, and tap on Themes. Of the three choices, select Scroll. Next, tap a word in the book to select it, then -- while holding your finger down on the drag handle -- scroll down through the text as far as you want. Once you've selected the text, a menu appears. Tap Speak, and Siri complies by reading your book. Should you need to pause the reading, just select another piece of text (even one word will do) and tap on Pause from the menu that appears. The short video below gives you an idea of how this all works.
Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson needn't testify in e-book case
Steve Jobs' biographer Walter Isaacson has been dropped from the upcoming Apple e-books price-fixing case, according to Paid Content. Class-action lawyers had originally subpoenaed Isaacson to submit his notes from interviews with Jobs regarding the iBookstore. However, Isaacson refused to do so, noting a New York law that allows a journalist to shield their sources. But new court documents filed last week reveal both parties have agreed to drop Isaacson -- and his notes -- from the case. The lawsuit alleges Apple -- and Jobs in particular -- colluded with publishers to inflate e-book prices. In September of last year Apple agreed to stop e-book price fixing in Europe. The e-book price fixing case in the US commences June 3.
Daily Update for March 5, 2013
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
iBooks 3.1 brings paid content to iBookstore in Japan
Version 3.1 of iBooks is out today and while it might not bring much in the way of new features for Western users, it's a pretty big deal for book lovers located in Japan. That's because the latest update introduces paid content on the order of hundred of thousands of books -- encompassing novels, manga and more -- something that the country's iBookstore has been without up until this point. Before now, iOS users in Japan have needed to be content with public domain e-books. In addition to the paid content rollout, the 3.1 update also introduces some improvements when reading Asian language books.
Apple starts offering paid iBookstore content in Japan
While Apple's iBookstore is available in numerous countries, readers who sit outside of a certain privileged zone have had to make do with public domain e-books at best. The Japanese won't have to settle as of today: a low-key iBookstore expansion gives them access to paid content, including manga and other more localized material. Accordingly, there's an iBooks 3.1 app update rolling out that both unlocks "hundreds of thousands" of titles in the Japanese store and improves support for Asian languages as a whole. Residents who've been looking for the most official means of reading JoJolion on their iPads just need to grab the refreshed iBooks at the source.
iTunes U content downloads pass the one billion mark
Apple completely revamped its iTunes U app last year to include full course materials and it looks like that work is paying off, as the company just trumpeted its billionth content download. Over 250,000 students are enrolled in the service, which now boasts "thousands" of iTunes U learning materials, according to Cupertino. The company added that 60 percent of those downloads came from outside the US, with educators in 30 different countries -- like recent additions Brazil and Turkey -- able to create content. OHU prof "Dr. Fus" Stoltzfus said that students using his materials range from students around the world to retirees, so if you've been thinking of a knowledge upgrade, you've got no excuse. For more, check the PR after the break.
Apple highlights self-published iBooks with new Breakout Books section
In a move intended to make discovering independent authors easier on the iBookstore, Apple has launched a new sub-section of the US iTunes Store called Breakout Books. Previously rolled out in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK, the section is meant to promote titles from writers who've opted to go it alone in the world of iBooks, offering selections from various genres added as -- in Apple's words -- "they begin to take off." Currently, the section has indie offerings broken down into romance, sci-fi & fantasy and mysteries & thrillers. We're not exactly sure why Apple chose to spotlight romance novels above everything else, but we're guessing it has something to do with the fact that Valentine's Day is right around the corner. Or maybe romance novels are just that popular on iTunes? If that's the case, look for our new book, Someone TUAW Love, to hit the iBookstore soon!
