Re: iBookstore -- your thoughts?

On 1/28/10, groovy_ahk <[email protected]> wrote:
> I am interested to read your thoughts on the new iBookstore, unveiled yesterday by Steve Jobs.
> It appears that the app "iBooks" is almost exactly like iTunes, and books will be sold for
> automatic download through it. I presume Apple would take a cut of each sale--I haven't
> been able to research it yet.

Unless they remove DRM like iTunes eventually did, it's doomed in the
long run. Books you can only read on a limited number of computers or
on very expensive devices, just like music, will send people off to
learn cracking software or find what they want in the torrent
networks.

>  It appears to me that Apple may begin receiving a huge chunk of the ebook market's sales.
> iTunes completely changed how we buy music. Will iBooks help give ebooks mainstream
> acceptance?

Ebooks have a harder way to go; people are more invested in the idea
of a book being connected to its physical container. Digital music
came after a hundred years of format-shifted sound--from vinyl to tape
to 8-track to CD; we were used to the idea that the music was separate
from whatever it was packaged in.

Books, not so much, and the packaging of books *drastically* shapes
the experience of them. (Unlike music; once it's coming out of the
speakers, it's less important if the origin is a disc or tape.)


-- 
"I follow Eris blindly in all things. That She is the Goddess of Chaos
simplifies this immensely."  -- Christian the Pagan


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