Using the iPad bookstore

Apple have made such a great success of selling music through the success of the iPod. Then Apple continued that success by selling video, that also could be seen through the iPod and now the iPad, so why not take it a stage further and also sell books and magazines. The publishing industry is ripe for some big changes and us as consumers deserve to have our books available to us on the latest technology. For authors it is a great time, because now it is so easy to be able to self publish and to build up your own readership. The publishers are feeling the pinch with this new way of working and new technology and they have even been expecting authors to do more of their own promotion of their own books, in any case. To a certain extent the iPad bookstore and other bookstores online such as the Kindle bookstore and the Barnes & Noble bookstore for the Nook, is the signal of the death knell of the old way of publishing. What does an iPad do for authors and publishers?

iPad Bookstore challenging the publishing status quo

Despite the fact there are these new changes in the publishing industry, some of the old ways of doing things are still persisting. The publishing industry has this notion that the publishing world should be divided up into the zones or countries. They will actively make it difficult for authors to sell their book in another country. What I’d like to see as an author and also as a consumer of books, is for books to be available worldwide, no limits and no borders.

For the author it is going to be better because it will not be necessary for publishers to have to make deals with distribution systems in a different country or a different continents, to be able to get those books sold. Being able to put your book into a worldwide bookstore such as the iPad bookstore, should be will mean that authors should be able to have better sales, only limited by the language that the book is written in.

Is the iPad Bookstore a good deal for the consumer

For the consumer, obviously the benefit is being able to go to one place and buy a book and it doesn’t matter if the book was originally written by an American in the American market, it will still be available in the iPad bookstore. And the same applies to audio books, as it does to the books that you read in applications such as iBooks, or the Kindle for iPad application. What we really want is to be able to start reading a book, wherever, such as on the iPad while sitting in bed and be able to pick up the book on another device. It could even be the Kindle which would be better to be able to read the same story while sitting on the beach. Realistically, for that to be able to function properly, you would have to be using the same bookstore. So it could work if you are using the Kindle for instance and the Kindle for iPad app. I don’t imagine that it is going to work if you wanted to read a book that you bought from Apple even if you had also bought the same book from Amazon for use on your Kindle. Then you have the iPad being used for reading books in schools.

Steve Jobs Biography top of chart and not even released yet

Even though I live in Spain, I can on the Spanish iPad bookstore, see books that are in English for me to read. Looking at the top charts for books in the iPad bookstore Spain, the top book in the paid for charts is the book by Walter Isaacson about Steve Jobs. The book costs €16.99 and at the moment it is just available for pre-order as it is not due to be released until later in the month.

In the list of books that you can get for free from the iPad Bookstore, there is the Spanish version of the iPad users manual and the iPhone user guide. Both of these also available in English. There are also books in there for free which are out of copyright, such as the book Dracula by Bram Stoker. Purchasing in the iPad Bookstore is an easy exercise, whether you are paying for a book or getting it for free. You just have to tap on the button, either the one that says gratis or the one that says buy. If you are buying a book from the iPad bookstore, Apple already has your credit card details. You will probably be asked to put in your password for your Apple ID to confirm your purchase. If you are clicking to get a book that is for free, just click and the download will begin.

New ways of marketing for authors on the iPad Bookstore

One of the new ways of working for authors is to to build up a fan base and a readership and to give away a small amount of work for free. What this does is to grow a group of people that like your work, a fan base, and when you put out something that is a full novel, for example, they will be more than happy to buy the work and support your writing talents. In the iPad bookstore in iTunes I have just downloaded a book called ‘The Four Types of Artists – Starving, Dying, Dead, and Rich!’ What would be nice with this book, and with any books in fact would be able to have a sampler of one or two pages, to help me make the buying decision if this was a paid for book. With this book on the iTunes page for it, there is just a description and a space for reviews by readers. No reader reviews for this book as yet. Maybe once I have read it I will put one in there and be the first to give it a rating.

iTunes Store to Search for Book Titles

Just the same as in a normal bookstore you can search for your book by genre. What is different is that you have also have the facility to do a search using the search facilities of the iTunes iPad bookstore. I just did a search for Ken Follett, who is one of my favourite authors. I recently read the book ‘Fall of Giants’. As per usual with the books by Ken Follett, it was a book that once started it was difficult to put down. Also in the search, I can see that there are audio books available to buy from the same author. I would thoroughly recommend the book ‘The Pillars of the Earth’ which is available at the price of €14.99 as an audio book and is also available in there as a book that you can read your iPad, for the price of €9.99.

Books in other languages in the iPad Bookstore

There are some books that are being published for the iPad that are available, not as books but as applications. Interestingly the book the Fall of Giants is available in Spanish as an application, both as a light version and also as a full version. The Light version is free and it seems to me that it would be a good way to get you hooked, because once you had started the story, certainly you will want to either buy the full application, the book, the iPad book or the audio book of the story. There is some good marketing going on there. I have just elected to download the light version of the application which according to the information says that it is available in English and in Spanish. I will know once I get to have a look at it, but it would be a good way to improve my Spanish reading abilities, if the two languages are included in the one application.

Leave a Comment Below

Why not leave a comment at the bottom of this post and tell me which has been your favourite book to read from the iPad bookstore. You can also tell us which has been your favourite audio book or favourite iPad book application.

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