Update – February 3, 2010: On Jan 27, 2010, iPad was unveiled to the world along with the Apple iBooks Store and an integrated iBooks reader app. Five major publishers have signed on with Apple’s iBooks and Amazon is whistling past the graveyard and trying desperately to shore up relations with publishers. One sign of Amazon’s iPad angst is their new “keep your Kindle for free” promotion.
Now the next logical shoe has dropped. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that major publishers have approached ScrollMotion to adapt their textbooks for use on the Apple iPad. ScrollMotion has a popular app on Apple’s App Store. The company adapts print texts to e-format and enhances them with built-in search, indexes, dictionaries and interactive flourishes. 
Update – May 3, 2009: CNBC reported today that six colleges are moving to digital textbooks and looking at Kindle. My advice to universities and students … wait for the Apple iTablet iPad.
Update – April 19, 2009: Since this post first appeared on Feb 3, several things have happened:
- Kindle launched an app for iPhone
- Several new ebook reader apps have appeared in the App Store
- Google Books for iPhone adds 1.5 million reading choices to iPhone/iPod Touch
- iTunes ebook sales are zooming!
iPhonAsia comment: You can already find a number of e-books and a few e-reader apps through the Apple App Store. We think this is only just the beginning. Apple may very well develop their own e-book reader app for iPhone (read and swipe pages with your finger or slip in your ear buds and touch “audio”), iPod Touch and Mac platforms and get busy on content deals with publishers. This is a bigger market than you might think. Stay tuned …
Jan 27, 2009 – Imagining an iTunes eBook Store
(imagine no more – Apple’s iBooks launched on iTunes exactly one year after this article was written)
EXCERPT: Confession time. I was wrong about reading ebooks on the iPhone.
When I evaluated various ereading devices a few months back, I came to the conclusion that the iPhone was not suitable for long form reading. Months later, I’ve now read several books on the iPhone and I have to admit that the experience is growing on me. In fact, I frequently find myself looking at my bookshelf and thinking, “I wish I had that book on my iPhone”.
In most cases those wishes are an impossibility because there’s no (legal) way to get the book in question onto my iPhone — or any other reading device, for that matter. In some cases, where digital editions are available, they aren’t available in a format that would work with any of the current iPhone reader applications.
There’s hope that all of this may be changing soon, as publisher interest in the iPhone/iPod Touch seems to be growing by the day. Publishers are rushing to experiment with all manner of ebook releases targeted at the iPhone.
Read full article > HERE
RT Blog Post: iPhonAsia Updated: eBooks have an epic future on Apple’s platform http://bit.ly/dwfPtb