"This Is Apple At Its Absolute Worst: It Thinks It Owns Any Book You Make Through iBooks" by Steve Kovach
“In addition to announcing new textbooks for iPad, Apple also released a new free Mac App that lets you create and publish your own books for sale in the iBooks store. It’s called iBooks Author.
It seems like a neat tool. Until you read the user agreement.
Dan Wineman pointed out on his blog that Apple’s End User License Agreement (EULA) states that books made with the iBook Author app and sold through the iBook store can’t be sold anywhere else.
However, if you offer your book for free in the iBooks store, then you can distribute it for free anywhere else you want.”
Oh Apple, you worthless fucks.
Will Apple launch a sort of GarageBand for e-books? “That’s what we believe you’re about to see,” MacInnis told Ars (and our other sources agree). “Publishing something to ePub is very similar to publishing web content. Remember iWeb? That iWeb code didn’t just get flushed down the toilet—I think you’ll see some of [that code] repurposed.
Ars Technica on Apple’s textbook event this week.
My hopes for this announcement, if it is a “GarageBand for eBooks”:
- It’s free
- It’s not just for text books
- It is able to tie into a boilerplate Newsstand app, allowing publishers to more easily layout periodical content in a standard way (the divergence between Newsstand apps is unnecessary and frustrating)
- Textbooks are published into a textbook ecosystem, with unified notes, book collections for courses managed by instructors, and interactive quizzes built into books allowing students to take short exams and instructors to grade easily from an iPad.
I think 2 will eventually pan out, but 3 is wishful thinking. 4 would be a game changer, but would require massive commitments from major universities to catch on. Teachers I know would like such an ecosystem (I would have liked it as a student), but it may be a hinderance to adoption and is probably best saved for later.
(via dbreunig)(via dbreunig)
Over 4 Days, News Corp. has Lost $4 Billion in Market Cap
One of the only major media companies to crack paid digital media is on the ropes. Combined with existing instability in the news world as the internet fragments both markets and papers*, there has never been a better time to be be or launch a news startup. (Via Bloomburg)
* We read articles mostly, not entire pubs. Much like people who buy singles from iTunes, in lieu of the entire album. This undermines one of the basic assumptions of news business models of yesteryear: papers wrote entire sections about cars to sell Ford ads in order to fund local reporting. Breakdown the package and the model falls apart.
Google expects to launch e-books sales soon
We may get to check out Google’s long-anticipated entry into the digital book sales market before the end of the year.
Google Editions, which was announced in spring and expected to launch in summer, is expected to be available in the U.S. by the end of the month, Google spokeswoman Jeannie Hornung told CNET today. In September, Hornung talked with CNET about some of the difficulties in launching the ambitious project, saying “The real answer is, we’ll launch the service when it’s ready.”
» via CNET news
via infoneer-pulse
(via techspotlight)
