Apple's education mission off to a flyer.
Last week, Apple gave details of its latest market assault – an attempt to shake up the market for books in schools and colleges.
This was iBooks2, an extension of its existing ebooks store, and the result of a partnership with publishers Pearson, McGraw-Hill and Houghton Muffin Harcourt. This trio is collectively responsible for 90 per cent of textbooks sold in the US.
iBooks 2 is available as a free app on the iPad, and offers textbooks for $14.99 or less. It launched at the same time as a new self-publishing kit called iBooks Author for wannabe authors.
According to Global Equities Research, the store shifted more than 350,000 textbooks in the first three days of availability (although a large number could have been the free version of E.O. Wilson’s Life on Earth designed to show off the offering).
Significantly, the analyst reckons there were 90,000 downloads of iBooks Author too.
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Early days, but encouraging for Apple, which wants to shake up the market for textbooks as it has music by cutting out a whole layer of distribution cost, opening up access to non-published authors and improve pay-outs to content makers.
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