iPad 2 unveiling, with uncertain future for outside e-book apps

If Apple’s invitation to its latest media event — a shiny glimpse of an iPad poking through a corner of a calendar —  is any indication, the iPad 2 will launch on Wednesday, March 2 in San Francisco. The timing appears to be no coincidence: Motorola’s Xoom tablet is being released tomorrow through Verizon and Apple’s announcement may delay some consumers from making a purchasing decision.

Of course the Internet is already buzzing with speculation over the tablet’s new features. The Guardian predicts a lighter, thinner body and more memory, but hopes for a USB port. This last feature seems unlikely considering how closed Apple has been to date — currently, all downloadable iPad media must be purchased through its app store, unless it’s accessed through a Web browser.

Thanks to a former Kobo employee, word is spreading that Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo may have their e-book apps pulled from Apple’s app store in June for not complying with its policy. Jim Dovey, Kobo’s former Apple platforms team lead, writes on his website:

[Apple's] in-app purchasing system only allows 3,000 or 3,500 distinct items to be in your catalog (depending who you talk to). Kobo and Amazon each have around 2.5 million titles. Judging by the title of Kobo’s app, 1.8 million are public domain (or otherwise free), so some 700,000 are paid titles, which they are under obligation to the content owners to make available for sale to all their users.

Apple has already denied the Sony Reader a place in its store for not using its in-app payment system, which gives Apple a 30 per cent commission on each book sold.

McGraw-Hill CEO blows Apple’s cover

To add to last-minute Apple Tablet fever, ebooknewser caught this clip on CNBC last night, when Terry McGraw, CEO of McGraw-Hill, revealed on-air that the Tablet will, in fact, be announced today, that McGraw-Hill has created e-books for the device, and that it will run on the iPhone operating system. From the clip:

They’ll make their announcement tomorrow on this one. We have worked with Apple for quite a while, and the Tablet is going to be based on the iPhone operating system, so it will be transferable. So what you’re going to be able to do now – we have a consortium of e-books – 95 per cent of our materials are in e-book format, so with the Tablet, it’s going to open up the higher education market, the professional market. The Tablet is going to be just really terrific.

For the full video, check it out on ebooknewser and fast forward to 2:50 in the clip.

Apple sends cease and desist letter to Gawker over “scavenger hunt”

According to Gizmodo, Apple has indirectly confirmed the existence of its yet-to-be-announced Apple Tablet by sending a cease and desist order to Gawker in the wake of that website’s offer of cold hard cash to anyone who submits verifiable proof of the existence of the device. From the Apple letter:

While Apple values and appreciates vibrant public commentary about its products, we believe you and your company have crossed the line by offering a bounty for the theft of Apple’s trade secrets. Such an offer is illegal and Apple insists that you immediately discontinue the Scavenger Hunt.

[...]

The information you are willing to pay for, such as photos of a yet-to-be released product, constitutes Apple trade secrets.

According to Gizmodo, however, Gawker’s offer still stands, at least as of this writing.

The publishing industry: this week in quotes

“Many people in the beleaguered industry are hoping that [The Apple Tablet] will do for reading what the iPod and iTunes did for music. A survey among booksellers claimed that an Apple e-reader would one of the main factors that will help push digital publishing forward.” – Thomas Rogers via Salon.com

“The fact is: My septuagenarian mother is delighted with her first-generation Kindle and my sixty-something-year-old mother-in-law is delighted with her Kindle 2 and my 14-year-old nephew is delighted with his iPod touch…If I were to guess, out of all the aforementioned people who already own devices, the only one likely to spend money on an upgraded device anytime soon will be my teenage nephew. That’s not a very large percentage of current owners willing to re-invest in this newest generation of devices, the ones we’ll be hearing about over the next week.” – Edward Nawotka, in an editorial on publishingperspectives.com

“Writing about writing is the best way I know to discover what I think about a book and what I think about what other people think about it. Sometimes reviews bring new readers and sometimes they don’t. Tony Hoaglund’s book Donkey Gospel published by Graywolf didn’t receive one review yet became widely read. A positive or opinionated review in the NYTBR can bring many readers, but reviews in smaller magazines do not have much effect.” – poet Emily Warn, on Lemon Hound

“I spend an inordinate amount of time doing nothing. I don’t even think it can be called daydreaming.” - Joyce Carol Oates, via Paris Review.

“I’m beginning to see just how irrelevant our prejudices about new technology really are. Books are wonderful partly because they have been an unchanging corner of our lives in a world that thrusts change on us every day. But anything that reassures us by being constant should also make us anxious, because there are no exceptions anymore — everything is being transformed in the digital age.” – Peter Scowen on the Globe‘s book blog

How the Apple Tablet could alter publishing

Over at Salon, Thomas Rogers looks at how the looming Apple Tablet might affect the world of publishing. It’s a good read, but Rogers seems a bit out-to-lunch when he suggests that publishers and booksellers are looking forward to the Tablet’s launch:

Although anticipation has already reached a fever pitch (just take a look at Twitter’s most popular topics on most days) book publishers have an especially vested interest in the gadget. While there have been numerous electronic book readers coming out in the last year (including the most recent, The Skiff), few have managed to capture the public’s imagination beyond the Amazon Kindle – which hasn’t exactly done much for publishers’ bottom line. Many people in the beleaguered industry are hoping that device will do for reading what the iPod and iTunes did for music. A survey among booksellers claimed that an Apple e-reader would be one of the main factors that will help push digital publishing forward. But will the tablet be the game-changer they’re hoping for?

Memo to Rogers: most publishers are terrified of the digital future – and not always without reason. And booksellers? They could be rendered obsolete if gadgets like the Tablet truly take off. Just sayin’.

Bookmarks: Apple Tablet rumours, books banned on airplanes, and more

A few bookish links from across the Web:

• The rumoured Apple Tablet comes closer to reality: the new product, potentially called “iSlate,” is expected to be unveiled on Jan. 26 in San Francisco
• Danger! Apparently, books and magazines pose a security threat to airplanes. They have been banned as carry-ons by Transport Canada until further notice
• Hobbit-lovers, mount your high horses: The Guardian’s Andrew Brown turns his blog into “a place to discuss the literary demerits of Lord of the Rings”
• The Onion on adults who get slightly overexcited by children’s picture books, including the gem Green Man, Blue Cat
• Katherine Paterson, author of The Bridge to Terabithia, has been named the national ambassador for young people’s literature in the U.S.

Bookmarks: Birthday wishes for Margaret Atwood, and more

Bookish links from around the Web:

• Happy (belated) birthday, Margaret Atwood. The author turned 70 yesterday
• Colum McCann has won the fiction prize at the National Book Awards for his novel Let the Great World Spin. Also at last night’s gala in New York, Dave Eggers picked up the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community
• Expanding on James Wood’s assertion that “prizes are the new reviews,” Salon.com’s Laura Miller discusses the emerging trend of “vanity book awards”
• Is the Apple tablet dead?
• The Literary Review has released the shortlist for the annual Bad Sex in Fiction award. On this year’s list are Philip Roth – no surprise there – Nick Cave, Paul Theroux, and Jonathan Littell
• Lou Reed, Maureen “Moe” Tucker, and Doug Yule, three members of the Velvet Underground, are reuniting for the first time in more than a decade, at – where else? – a branch of the New York Public Library, to promote a new coffee-table book, The Velvet Underground: New York Art