Is Apple studying the e-textbook market?

An Apple event scheduled for Jan. 19 has insiders speculating the technology giant will announce its entrance into the e-textbook market.

In advance of the education-themed event, tech website betanews.com compiled a list of Apple’s potential U.S. competitors, which includes Amazon’s e-textbook rental program and online distributor CourseSmart.

Condé Nast tech website Ars Technica suggests Apple isn’t interested in becoming a content provider, but will announce production tools that will allow anyone to publish interactive e-books for distribution on Apple devices like the iPhone and iPad.

Last week, eBound Canada, the digital arm of the Association of Canadian Publishers, announced a partnership with Follett Canada that would give elementary and secondary schools greater access to titles by independent Canadian publishers.

Book links round-up: gospel according to Frey, Pulitzer punk, and more

• Are you there, God? It’s me, James Frey, spreading my gospel
• Jennifer Egan sneaks post-punk music writing into the Pulitzer Prize
• Would you read 1,100 pages of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest on your iPhone? Apple’s counting on it
• The Los Angeles Review of Books unveils phase one of its new online salon
• LGBT booksellers respond to the closing of San Francisco’s A Different Light Bookstore

Daily book biz round-up: Yann Martel heads to Europe; Harry Potter heads to Orlando; and more

Scoops! Lots of ‘em!

• On the eve of Yann Martel’s European tour, the Guardian runs a not-so-nice account of the genesis of Beatrice and Virgil
• Meanwhile, Martel gets moral support from author of The Boy in Striped Pajamas
• Evaluating Canadian publishers’ websites
• Heather Reisman dons black robe, joins secret society of rich and powerful
• London mayor wants Harry Potter theme park to be built in his city, not in Orlando
  
• Steve Jobs unveils the iBookstore-ready iPhone 4
• Apple’s iBookstore sales numbers not particularly meaningful
• Forget about books on phones – now you can get books on vinyl!
• Joe Schuster Award-winners announced

Daily book biz round-up: Stieg Larsson big in digital; new iPhone to include iBookstore; and more

News to round out your week with:

• Almost 30% of first-week sales of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest are e-books
• A refreshingly candid response to The New Yorker‘s 20 Under 40 list
• iPhone 4G will include iBookstore (to the consternation of 3G owners everywhere)
• Blair Underwood reduced to starring in crappy “Vook” vignettes
• R.I.P.: poet and Ginsberg muse Peter Orlovsky

Daily book biz round-up: Lansens on 24; iPad bolsters piracy; and more

• Lori Lansens proves it certainly doesn’t hurt sales to have a Hollywood husband
• Amazon’s Kindle division gathers the troops to compete with Apple
• Does the iPad encourage e-book piracy? Wired says, “Kinda”
• MobyLives picks the five best indie book trailers
• Digitalbookworld analyzes how much money can be made from book-related iPhone apps
• Katherine Govier on how to keep in touch while writing

Bookmarks: E-books, Nooks, and poetry (or, one of these things is not like the others)

Sundry links from across the Web:

• Amazon: 1, Print publishers: 0. Stephen R. Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, has given Amazon exclusive e-book rights to two of his best-selling books 
• The clandestine guy in the striped shirt gets appy: Where’s Waldo? is now on the iPhone 
• The Wall Street Journal reviews the Barnes & Noble Nook and finds it doesn’t compare with the Kindle 
• The Guardian asks the pessimistic question: “Will e-books spell the end of great writing?” 
• This week in poetry: HTMLGIANT picks the 25 most important books of poetry of the 2000s; The Guardian considers the role of poetry in advertising; and Times Higher Education wonders if poetry is lost in a consumerist world 

The Atlantic kindles a new relationship with Amazon

Edna O’Brien, Curtis Sittenfeld, and Paul Theroux are among the writers who will be making their short fiction available exclusively to Kindle users thanks to a new deal between online retailer Amazon.com and the general interest magazine The Atlantic. The first two of these stories, O’Brien’s “Shovel Kings” and Christopher Buckley’s “Cynara,” are available today. From the press release:

As outlets publishing fiction rapidly dwindle, The Atlantic asserts its historic commitment to the form by introducing two new short stories each month via Amazon’s Kindle – becoming the first magazine to deliver fiction exclusively to Kindle readers…. These works will also be available for purchase and reading with the Kindle for iPhone and Kindle for PC apps, as well as planned Kindle platform expansions for Mac and Blackberry.

At the risk of sounding snarky, this Quillblogger would like to point out the irony in the first clause of that opening sentence, given the magazine’s decision in 2005 to cease publishing short fiction on a monthly basis and to group fiction into a kind of annual gulag in their summer issue.

Moreover, The New York Times points out that authors who have their work published as part of this agreement will have access to a rather exclusive audience:

For authors who sign with The Atlantic for the Kindle deal, their contracted work is limited to that one format, since those who don’t own a Kindle – or an iPhone, on which readers can install a Kindle app – won’t be able to read it.

Participating authors, who have been paid what the NYT refers to as “a four-figure fee,” may at some future time reprint their stories in collections or other periodicals, but they are prohibited from allowing them to appear on competing e-readers.

Bookmarks: Coolio cooks, Anne of Green Gables tweets, and more

A few sundry links from across the Web:

• “Living in a Gourmet’s Paradise?” Rapper Coolio now has his own cookbook, Cookin’ with Coolio
• A new audio-book version of the Bible is available, featuring Richard Dreyfuss as Moses, Luke Perry as Judas Iscariot, and — who else? — James Caviezel reprising his role as Jesus Christ. The L.A. Times Jacket Copy reports the audio-book is described as a “verbal cinema” complete with a musical score and sound effects
• You can now be a follower, or “kindred spirit,” of Canada’s favourite redhead. Anne of Green Gables is using Twitter
• We’re well aware how prevalent bad sex is in fiction … so how about awards for good sex? 
• You are officially invited to attend Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry … with a new iPhone Spells app 
• Sad but true: Finn Reeder, Flu Fighter is a book for middle-school aged children about the ubiquitous H1N1 virus

Bookmarks: Duranie lit, fun with Pynchon, and more

• Simpson’s writer takes revenge on uppity Pynchon scholar
• Nick Cave has a new novel, with its own iPhone app, Dave Byrne has a new memoir, and now … wait for it … Duran Duran has a book club on its website?
• Listen up, weary book publicists – all you gotta do is get a celeb to tweet your book title and you’re gold!
• Infringe first and ask questions later? Well yes, if you’re Google. The copyright office weighs in
• Details magazine lists its favourite literary podcasts
• The 9/11 novels worth reading

Barnes & Noble launches world’s biggest e-book store

U.S. mega-chain Barnes & Noble announced in a press release yesterday the creation of the world’s biggest e-book store comprising “more than 700,000 titles, including hundreds of new releases and bestsellers at only $9.99.” Unlike Amazon’s Kindle-only e-books, e-books purchased through B&N’s store will be compatible with a number of platforms (aside from the Kindle, of course): iPhone, BlackBerry, and most Windows and Mac computers. Through a partnership with Google Books, the B&N e-book store will also offer more than 500,000 free and downloadable public domain e-books.

B&N als announced an exclusive agreement to provide e-books for the forthcoming Plastic Logic e-reader, a device that is geared toward business professionals. From Fortune:

Plastic Logic vice president of business development Daren Benzi says his device is geared for business travelers, and as such will support the display of PDF files, Microsoft’s MS Word, Powerpoint, and Excel, as well as newspapers and magazines. But e-books are a big part of the game plan. “Will we carry every single one of those 700,000-plus titles? I don’t know. We’ll announce that as we get further along,” said Benzi. “But we will have access to them all.

Elsewhere in the blogosphere, The Book Oven analyzes how B&N’s move will affect the e-book market.