Two weeks after Apple unveiled its iBooks Author program for designing interactive e-books, template king Jumsoft was there with its first set of iBooks Author templates, dubbed Book Palette. Jumsoft has now expanded that collection to 25 with the announcement of five new designs that offer “ … upmarket design quality at a reasonable price.” The five new templates include the crisp Decorum, the elegant Royal Title, and the colorful Taste Buds designs. All 25 templates contain the full set of standard sections and page layouts provided in the iBooks Author app, including covers, chapter pages, text pages, tables of contents, glossary pages and more....

Yesterday, we filled you in on the fact that the Berlin-based digital reading platform known as Readmill was very close to releasing an e-reading app for the iPhone, and as it happens ... the app was officially released today. (Quite a coincidence, no?) According to the company, the newly-released app (appropriately enough, it's called Readmill for iPhone) was designed to create what they're referring to as "a seamless mobile reading experience for users." Readmill, after all, is already available as an app for the iPad. And so Readmill built the new app partially to cater towards the growing number of people wanting to...

This has been a year of tech experimentation for me. I gave up my clunky-but-serviceable Kindle Touch in favor of a slick, front-lit Kobo. I relegated my iPad 2 to work functions, and picked up a more ergonomic iPad Mini for home use. And I experimented with various apps in search of a perfect reading platform. I didn't find it. It is with mixed feelings that I declare the Kindle app the 'winner,' and give up on iBooks. Here's why: The Kindle can sync personal documents. That's it. That's the killer feature iBooks and Kobo and all the rest lack, and it...

Here I go, turn the page. On the NY Times Bits blog, Nick Bilton gleefully reports that the patent office has seen fit to award Apple a design patent on, of all things, the digital page turn used in iBooks. Bilton uses this as proof of the ridiculousness of the current patent system, as well as a reminder of the obnoxiousness of Apple’s recent patent litigation practices. But is this patent really as silly as it looks? As some people point out in the comments under Bilton’s article, the patent is narrower than Bilton makes it seem—it doesn’t cover any page turns,...

Just a few days ago—last Friday, in fact—we posted an item here on TeleRead that included more than a half-dozen TV commercials featuring e-readers. A series of television ads featuring the iPad mini have since begun airing. And interestingly enough, one of the two spots—it shows off the benefits of iBooks—is actually touting the device as something of a beefed-up e-reader. (The 30-second spot is below.) In other iPad mini news, a brief item about the new commercials on TNW says Apple is claiming that "it 'practically sold out' of the iPad mini in its first weekend of availability, with combined sales of 3...

  by Jonathan Pena for Technology Tell As the widespread rumors wisely foretold, Apple CEO Tim Cook took the stage today at Apple's media event to announce a new version of the iBooks app for Apple’s iOS devices. The updated app brings enhancements such as support for 3D imaging, embedded video and multi-touch gestures. Apple has also added a new button that allows users to share content via their favorite social media networks. iBooks also now supports Korean and Japanese languages. The update is now live; if you're so inclined, you can download the app now in the App Store. * * * Follow us @TeleRead Join us on Facebook...

  The appearance of the yet unreleased "iBooks 3.0" as a requirement for certain titles in Apple's iBookstore suggests the company will soon update its ebook client app for iOS, likely in conjunction with the release of iPad mini. According to a report by The Next Web, there is already at least one title in the French iTunes Store specifying iBooks 3.0. Under the title's "Requirements," which are generated by Apple and not potentially a third party developer's typo, iTunes specifies, "This book requires iBooks 3.0 or later and iOS 4.2 or later. The books can be displayed with iBooks on an iPad, iPhone (3G or...

I remember testing out iBooks when I first got my iPad, and promptly dismissing it. I didn't plan to buy from their store (I prefer to buy DRM-free, or at least DRM-removable) and I planned to use the Kindle app for its sync feature, so I didn't really see the need. In fact, when my aunt told me she got an iPad and had been using iBooks, I tried to talk her out of it in favor of the Kobo app, so she could share books with her Kobo-owning husband. Well, I 've had a second look at iBooks thanks to...

Quotebook is an app that came to me via the Genius suggestions in my newly updated iPad's App Store. It's an app designed for clipping and storing favorite quotes for future reference. Unlike other iOS quote apps, it does not come with a library of quotes pre-installed. You are meant to input your own via typing directly into a new record, or by coping and pasting from Twitter, Safari, iBooks or some other source. I had previously been using an epub file to store quotes and clips from books I was reading. It had definitely improved my reading; I liked being...

Did you think that e-book vendors have a hard time with Apple here in the USA? Publishing Perspectives has a terrific (one might even say hilarious in some places) report on the frenetic activity engendered by Apple’s decision to launch its iBookstore in Latin America. Among other things, it asked Latin American publishers to redo their books’ metadata—and then changed its mind on how it wanted the metadata done three times over the course of several days. Apple’s preference for prices that end in .49 or .99 means trouble for the publishers who sell their books in their own...

Last year we covered Ars Technica publishing John Siracusa’s 27,000-word comprehensive review of OS X 10.7 Lion as an e-book, and the very successful sales numbers for a review that could still be read free on-line. This year, with the release of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, Siracusa has done it again—but as the Nieman Journalism Lab reports, the process has not been without snafus. Since Mountain Lion was under NDA until the day it launched, that means that the e-book had to be submitted to Amazon at the same time the article was allowed to be published online...

Less than a month after finally coming to Barnes & Noble e-books, DC Comics has just placed its first graphic novel with Apple’s iBooks store. The recent graphic novel Batman: Earth One, a revised retelling of Batman’s origin story, will cost $24.95 in print but $12.99 agency pricing on the iBooks store. This will be the first DC book to show up on iBooks, but probably won’t be the last. DC already sells multiple books through Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and it would likely not be too hard to bring them to Apple as well. Certainly,...