Further UK iBook availability

[SamNeeds]

Morning all,

Any indication as to when further publishers will appear on the UK iBook store? Authors such as John Grisham, James Patterson and so on are yet to be available... :-( I had a quick look at Google News but nothing as of yet.

Also, as an aside, have you heard anything regarding magazines like CAR and EVO (car magazines) and being published on the iPad?

 

[steviem]

Unfortunately I don't know, but I would love Evo Magazine to be on the iPad.

 

[wilsonlaidlaw]

Unfortunately I don't know, but I would love Evo Magazine to be on the iPad.

I did email both Evo and Autocar on this for paid subscriptions. As I am in France for half the year, an e-magazine is the only realistic alternative for me. No response to date. I will send a personal to Chris Harris, if I don't hear anything soon. Given that the lay-up is all done electronically nowadays, it should not be huge job to port that over to an e-magazine. If they wanted to do it quickly, they could just buy the software that Wired uses. Dennis Publishing, who own Evo, are quite into e-publishing but I think it is mainly done in Flash.

It would be nice if Mr. Jobs let his customers decide if they wanted Flash or not, instead of making an arbitrary decision on their behalf. Fine, if you find it is hogging the battery or making your iPad/iPhone crash, you can take it off or disable it but it is your decision. It would be fair enough for Applecare or the helplines to decline to deal with any issues arising out of or caused by Flash on an iPad/iPhone.

Wilson

 

[SamNeeds]

I'd presume they'd use InDesign to create their layouts anyway, so transfering it to the framework WIRED uses wouldn't be too much hassle. But for the likes of EVO and Car, the photographs would look stunning. Come on Dennis Publishing and Bauer Media!!!

 

[steviem]

I sent this to geoff_love@dennis.co.uk and peter_wooton@dennis.co.uk (Publishing and Interactive directors of dennis)

Hi,

I'm just contacting you to find out whether Dennis Publishing is considering releasing an iPad edition of Evo Magazine.

I feel that this device is really well suited to displaying the great content of Evo magazine and being able to access it regardless of location would be amazing.

Even if it was just a pdf version of the magazine I would be happy, although extra content that the magazine is unable to convey through print alone would be possible too.

When I first saw the iPad, I immediately thought of the wonderful photo books released by Evo from time to time. Some of the tactile experience lost on the web is regained when using the iPad, and at the moment, I really enjoy having it almost as a 'coffee table book', being able to browse through family photographs and holding it like a book and using gestures to change pages does help bring back some of the print experience that using a Laptop removes.

Thank you for taking the time to read this email and I hope that in the near future I can take out an Evo iPad subscription.

Kind Regards,

steviem

Hopefully there will be some kind of good news...

 

[JulianL]

Morning all,

Any indication as to when further publishers will appear on the UK iBook store? Authors such as John Grisham, James Patterson and so on are yet to be available... :-( I had a quick look at Google News but nothing as of yet.

I find it really hard to tell what's going on inside the iBook store. I visit at least once a day to try and get an idea of what's being added but it's difficult to see.

The tricks I try to use are to go to a category (e.g. Fiction & Literature) but I can't find a way to see a book count because it always displays me "books <x> to <y> of 275" and that 275 number never changes (for any category) so I can't find any way to see a general count to at least get an idea how many books a week/month/whatever are being added in a particular category.

The other thing I do is again go to a category and sort by release date so that, I assume, the most recent publications are at the head of the list. If the store was growing rapidly then I would hope to see new entries at the head of the list quite frequently but it really doesn't seem to change that much. Maybe it's not working as I expect or maybe the expansion will be more lumpy with the occasional big uploads and very little in between.

I'm still watching and waiting but right now the range of commercial titles is extremely disappointing.

- Julian

 

[SamNeeds]

Good stuff...hopefully CAR and Evo will sort something out.

Back on topic though, I hope more books are released soon. It's a bit limited!!

 

[wilsonlaidlaw]

Good stuff...hopefully CAR and Evo will sort something out.

Back on topic though, I hope more books are released soon. It's a bit limited!!

I am buying more from Kobo and Kindle for their iPad apps than iBooks but their prices are a bit steep. Choice is definitely wider. As iPad's penetration of the market increases, I am guessing that Barnes and Noble will come out with an app for their wholly owned subsidiary of Fictionwise.com. I have quite a large bookshelf on that, quite a few of which I have not got round to reading on my MBP. It would be nice to get them on my iPad.

Wilson

 

[JulianL]

I am buying more from Kobo and Kindle for their iPad apps than iBooks but their prices are a bit steep. Choice is definitely wider. As iPad's penetration of the market increases, I am guessing that Barnes and Noble will come out with an app for their wholly owned subsidiary of Fictionwise.com. I have quite a large bookshelf on that, quite a few of which I have not got round to reading on my MBP. It would be nice to get them on my iPad.

Wilson

I do want one winner though. I like the idea of carrying my entire library with me and that becomes even nicer if it's all in one app rather than having my library split across multiple readers. I suppose a universal reader that could read all the main competing formats would solve the problem but, with all the competing proprietary DRMs, I don't see that happening.

As well as iPad penetration increasing, there's also iPhone joining the game in just over a week when iOS 4 releases and brings iBooks to at least the 3GS and 4, I think it's still uncertain as to whether it will come to the 3 but my guess is that it will. I hope that people also take to reading on their phones; I've been doing it since 1999 and, for fiction, a small screen really isn't an issue.

Apple are a huge company and they already have iTunes experience that hopefully can be applied to the iBooks area so I'm cautiously optimistic that things will improve significantly. We are only a few weeks into the UK bookstore's life so I keep telling myself that it is very, very early days.

- Julian.

 

[wilsonlaidlaw]

I do want one winner though. I like the idea of carrying my entire library with me and that becomes even nicer if it's all in one app rather than having my library split across multiple readers. I suppose a universal reader that could read all the main competing formats would solve the problem but, with all the competing proprietary DRMs, I don't see that happening.

As well as iPad penetration increasing, there's also iPhone joining the game in just over a week when iOS 4 releases and brings iBooks to at least the 3GS and 4, I think it's still uncertain as to whether it will come to the 3 but my guess is that it will. I hope that people also take to reading on their phones; I've been doing it since 1999 and, for fiction, a small screen really isn't an issue.

Apple are a huge company and they already have iTunes experience that hopefully can be applied to the iBooks area so I'm cautiously optimistic that things will improve significantly. We are only a few weeks into the UK bookstore's life so I keep telling myself that it is very, very early days.

- Julian.

Julian,

My guess is sadly things will get worse not better on DRM/formats/codecs, with every player jealously guarding their slice of the market. I would not be at all surprised to see regional DRM's soon, along the line of DVD's.

This is one area in which I am wholly in approval of the DRM hackers. If I have bought a copy of the book, it should be mine to do what I like with, other than distribute copies, which is piracy, in the end to the disadvantage of those who want to see authors continuing to write and publishers to publish new titles. I should be free to view my copy of the book on every device I have and to lend a single copy to others, while disabling my copy, just like I could with a printed book.

I did used to try to read books on various Palm Treos in the days when I was still commuting to London but gave it up as a bad job. Just too much page turning and on the 680 and to a lesser extent the 650, where the battery life was poor to begin with, if you read a book for say 60+ minutes, that was nearly the battery gone.

Wilson

 

[JulianL]

Julian,

My guess is sadly things will get worse not better on DRM/formats/codecs, with every player jealously guarding their slice of the market. I would not be at all surprised to see regional DRM's soon, along the line of DVD's.

This is one area in which I am wholly in approval of the DRM hackers. If I have bought a copy of the book, it should be mine to do what I like with, other than distribute copies, which is piracy, in the end to the disadvantage of those who want to see authors continuing to write and publishers to publish new titles. I should be free to view my copy of the book on every device I have and to lend a single copy to others, while disabling my copy, just like I could with a printed book.

I did used to try to read books on various Palm Treos in the days when I was still commuting to London but gave it up as a bad job. Just too much page turning and on the 680 and to a lesser extent the 650, where the battery life was poor to begin with, if you read a book for say 60+ minutes, that was nearly the battery gone.

Wilson

I agree with everything you say (except regarding experiences of too frequent page turns - maybe you read very quickly, or maybe you're overly-flamboyant in how you turn a page so it's a labour-intensive activity for you ).

I think my enduring obsession with battery life comes from my history of ebook reading, I couldn't cope with the 60-ish minutes that you're talking about but on my almost 3-year old HTC Touch Cruise I got about 12 hours when the battery was new and still get about 7 hours now. Watching video is massively more demanding on the CPU than book reading so, if the iPhone 4 is quoting 10 hours of watching video and 40 hours of listening to music, I would be surprised if, with WiFi off, the new iPhone didn't do at least 12 if not 15 hours of book reading. I'll know soon enough, pre-order availability permitting.

- Julian

 

[Streethawk]

I agree with everything you say (except regarding experiences of too frequent page turns - maybe you read very quickly, or maybe you're overly-flamboyant in how you turn a page so it's a labour-intensive activity for you ).

I think my enduring obsession with battery life comes from my history of ebook reading, I couldn't cope with the 60-ish minutes that you're talking about but on my almost 3-year old HTC Touch Cruise I got about 12 hours when the battery was new and still get about 7 hours now. Watching video is massively more demanding on the CPU than book reading so, if the iPhone 4 is quoting 10 hours of watching video and 40 hours of listening to music, I would be surprised if, with WiFi off, the new iPhone didn't do at least 12 if not 15 hours of book reading. I'll know soon enough, pre-order availability permitting.

- Julian

Quite possibly more, as most dont read with the screen at full brightness, you could see 20 hours of reading. If it is JUST reading.

 

[JulianL]

Quite possibly more, as most dont read with the screen at full brightness, you could see 20 hours of reading. If it is JUST reading.

I actually agree with that as well. I almost put 20 hours in my last post but I decided to err on the side of caution.

My experience on my current HTC and on my previous Sony Clie (PalmOS) devices has been that ebook reading and music-listening time are virtually identical because the power drain from having the screen on when reading (at low brightness, as you observed) is offset by the fact that the CPU is working a lot harder (decoding the music) when listening to music. I wouldn't expect it to be so equal on the iPhone 4 because CPU efficiency has gone through the roof, and there is also almost certainly lots of additional optimised hardware in there to decode music with minimum power draw, so the screen will be the more dominant part of the equation now. It will be interesting to see how it pans out. Battery life is why I kept waiting and waiting to jump into the iPhone world and, to be more on topic for this forum, is why I am extremely happy with the iPad.

For the record I am something of a fraud being on this thread since, although I'm an avid ebook reader, an iPad owner, and a frequent visitor to the UK iBook store, I haven't really done any serious reading on the iPad. I have however downloaded a few books from the iBook store in preparation for moving my reading over to the iPhone.

- Julian

 

[Streethawk]

I actually agree with that as well. I almost put 20 hours in my last post but I decided to err on the side of caution.

My experience on my current HTC and on my previous Sony Clie (PalmOS) devices has been that ebook reading and music-listening time are virtually identical because the power drain from having the screen on when reading (at low brightness, as you observed) is offset by the fact that the CPU is working a lot harder (decoding the music) when listening to music. I wouldn't expect it to be so equal on the iPhone 4 because CPU efficiency has gone through the roof, and there is also almost certainly lots of additional optimised hardware in there to decode music with minimum power draw, so the screen will be the more dominant part of the equation now. It will be interesting to see how it pans out. Battery life is why I kept waiting and waiting to jump into the iPhone world and, to be more on topic for this forum, is why I am extremely happy with the iPad.

For the record I am something of a fraud being on this thread since, although I'm an avid ebook reader, an iPad owner, and a frequent visitor to the UK iBook store, I haven't really done any serious reading on the iPad. I have however downloaded a few books from the iBook store in preparation for moving my reading over to the iPhone.

- Julian

Well i've just finished The Fellowship of the Ring, not had much time to read, but the experience was great. So much so that i sold my Sony eReader after getting through the first hundred pages.

 

[wilsonlaidlaw]

I am trying to be disciplined and finish all the Adobe Digital Editions books I bought for my MBP before switching over totally for e-reading to the iPad. Otherwise, I know that the ADE books will sit unread for ever on my MB. I have been in contact with John Nack of Adobe on another issue, where he is asking a panel of CS5 Photoshop users and others, if they want a PSD reader for iPad. My post back to him was that no, I did not want to view PSD's on an iPad, as the only point of PSD's is that you can split the layers, for which you need Photoshop. However what I did want was 1) An iPad version of Adobe Digital Editions, with a log on, so that I could transfer and open books already purchased and 2) Irrelevant to this thread, a native viewer for DNG/RAW files, so that I did not have to take RAW and JPEG on my camera, in order to "see" the files transferred to the iPad.

Wilson