Apple to be major e-book supplier? Could music-related e-booklets pave the way?
“Apple is working with the four largest record labels to stimulate digital sales of albums by bundling a new interactive booklet, sleeve notes and other interactive features with music downloads, in a move it hopes will change buying trends on its online iTunes store.” – FT.com, via Mike Cane.
The TeleRead take: Mightn’t this and the rumored tablet (artist’s concept shown) be reasons for Amazon to change strategies and root for ePub and the death of DRM, which makes every format proprietary? I don’t want to see either Amazon or Apple bossing the e-book industry around. We need competition, and the e-market will be big enough in time to support a bunch of large suppliers,
July 27th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
Man, ePub is dead. Word of it just hasn’t been evenly distributed yet.
July 27th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Gosh, Mike, that ought to be news to the E Ink gizmo-makers who are moving away from Mobi to ePub. Same for Hachette and others that use it as a distribution format. Ditto for Springer, which is just begging for eBook standards. Ditto for Atlantis which lets even nontechnical people do ePub books.
Jeez, why are you pushing Apple do hard? Jeff Bezos is bad enough as a candidate to run the e-book industry. I congratulate you for all those positive words about the only guy who’d be more egotistical about it. Steve Jobs, lol.
Cheers,
David
July 27th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Don’t be surprised if the opposite is true. Bezos and Jobs had to agree to allow the Kindle app in the iTunes store. Maybe we should be talking “Kindle” and mean “book software” rather than “device”. Maybe there is going to be a strong relationship between both companies rather than competition. Maybe DRM is alive and well in such a partnership. Or maybe DRM free documents will incur an additional fee.