Apple may have recorded more than 350,000 textbook downloads from its iBookstore in the three days following the company’s education event, where it announced its new iBooks 2 platform, new textbook features and other iPad-centric services for students.
The figure is offered by Global Equities Research — as reported by AllThingsD — which monitored downloads on Apple’s iBookstore platform using its proprietary tracking system. The company also notes that Apple saw more than 90,000 downloads of its iBook Author tool via the Mac App Store, over the same three-day period.
The figure is impressive, given the fact that there were only 7 titles available at launch. Apple offered free downloads of E.O. Wilson’s Life on Earth, Algebra 1, Biology, Chemistry, Environmental Science, Geometry and Physics, hosting them in the new Textbook category in the iBookstore.
The company will cover five school years for less than US$15 each, partnering with three leading textbook makers Pearson, McGraw Hill and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Together, the three companies currently provide 90% of the textbooks available to high schoolers, the first age group Apple is targeting.
Other Apple partners include DK Publishing and E.O Wilson, which both launched titles on the iBookstore when the new Textbook category was unveiled.
Global Equities Research estimates that iPad-focused titles will cost 80% less to produce, providing the ”recipe for Apple’s success in the textbook industry.”
ebook, epub, ibook, pdf, text, apps, websites ! What is needed in this "affair" is a new role more than anything else. This new role could be described as "personal contracts/licences holder" "account managers for personal contract/licences and login/passwds or certificates"(no contents or copies in there, just references), something like that, several of them of course, and ability to move all your "assets" or "belongings" from one to the other, so that a trust relationship can exist regarding the privacy of these data (and privacy of these data also under strong legal constraints for these organisations). Then you can have an environment with a clear role separation between these organisations on one side, and editors, on line shops, on line content holders and difusers on the other. Which then could allow a user to buy an ebook, apps, websites (access to) "for life"(or with some timing guarenteed in a strict legal point of view, but "for life" in spirit), possibility of upgrade if new edition and you feel like it, and that's it. Enough with these "private bookshelves"(music, video, sito shelves) linked to some device maker, on line shops, "social network", or some other giant ! A bit more developed below : http://iiscn.wordpress.com/2011/05/15/concepts-economie-numerique-draft/ (and in the "copies_licences" text (2007) linked in the post) And almost EVERYTHING already there really
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LikeSo much for the cries of no one will use the service, it's a disgrace etc. Now the money is rolling the naysayers will be scrambling to write a book : )
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Wow. Pretty good start.
Maybe so....but this is awesome!
paper is here to stay