Apple takes on textbooks, an insider dishes on publishing denial, and how SOPA would affect publishing.
The textbook industry might not be as "reinvented" as Apple hoped
The most anticipated, if not the biggest, news this week was Apple's education-centric event on Thursday. It announced iBooks 2 for iPad; iBooks Author, free WYSIWYG book formatting software for authors as well as textbook creators; and a new iTunes U app (also free) that gives users access to a variety of educational content. (Ars Technica has a nice roundup of the event, and Tim Carmody takes an in-depth look at each new feature.)According to its press release, Apple also announced partnerships with publishers Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw-Hill and Pearson to offer textbooks through the iBookstore. Many of the new textbooks are priced at $14.99 or less — Peter Kafka at All Things Digital explains how everyone could still make a profit at that price point.
As disruptive as this all may look on the surface, however, John Paul Titlow at ReadWriteWeb outlines four level-headed reasons why the textbook industry might not be as "reinvented" as Apple hopes. Specifically: Apple's solution is expensive and closed platform; it misses the mark on the target audience; forming partnerships with major publishers may be misguided; and competition is as big as the web. Titlow's post is worth reading.
In addition, a post at Business Insider points out that the digital textbooks will be between 2 and 3 GB. The storage on the iPad is rather limited, with the most affordable model having just 16 GB of space. That may be plenty of space ... until your class schedule fills up and you want to have music, games, videos and other apps on your iPad. And to complicate things further, Dan Wineman also uncovers big issues with the end-user license agreement (EULA) for iBooks Author.
O'Reilly Radar via Publishing Talk Daily