I’m not sure whether you can really call this “ironic”, as misused as that word often is, but it’s certainly amusing. Apple has notified some purchasers of the Steve Jobs biography e-book on iBooks that they should delete the current version and download a new version at no charge, Macworld UK reports. Apple confirmed to Macworld that the emails were genuine and the instructions were to fix formatting problems suffered by a small number of customers who had downloaded the iBook. No changes have been made to the content. Of course, this sort of...

From The Mac Observer: Apple said on Tuesday that the company has had 180 million downloads from its iBooks ePub book store. The news came during Apple’s quarterly conference call with analysts, and served to highlight Apple’s ongoing success with iTunes. ... Apple didn’t offer a dollar amount for its iBooks sales, nor did it quantify the number of units sold versus the number of units downloaded. Some books are downloaded to multiple devices per account, and some of the titles available on iBooks are free. Apple has never specified what it determines as a “download” from the...

Kindle has just launched officially in France at €99 and a decent seeming catalogue of French titles to go with the English language books already available. Of course Amazon has also opened the French market to self-publishers and independent publishers through their Kindle Direct Platform. Yesterday Google brought its UK ebook store online. Last week, iBooks launched in over two dozen countries around Europe. And this only six months since Amazon launched Kindle in Germany. It is clear now that the pace of adoption of ebooks will rise in Europe if only because availability of ereaders AND ebooks is increasing rapidly here. What’s more the price for the new Kindle, at JUST sub-€100...

That's right - free.  According to the iBookstore: The manuscript is illustrated throughout by Dodgson, who later commissioned John Tenniel to come up with the drawings we are more familiar with. This eBookTreasures facsimile edition has a transcription of the text throughout as well as superb narration by Miriam Margoyles. ...

On PaidContent, Charles Arthur brings up one of the important facets of Steve Jobs’s legacy that tends to get overshadowed by Jobs’s hardware successes. Quite apart from all the gadgets Jobs designed, he also designed a new business model for the music industry: the 99-cent song. The headline of Arthur’s article suggests that Jobs’s great success was “persuading the world to pay for content,” but the article itself seems to take the opposite tack: the world was ready to pay for content, but Jobs’s success was in persuading the content-owners to sell it digitally. Arthur explains that...

Back in June, Apple introduced a new iBook feature it calls Read Aloud, which is similar to Nook's Read to Me feature in that it provides a human voice narration that syncs to the onscreen text. In both commercial cases, the feature is meant primarily for children's books. Now Apple has updated its iBookstore Assets Guide to include instructions on how to add a Read Aloud narration track to your EPUB file. You can't access the latest guide unless you're a registered iTunes Connect member, but eBookNewswer has printed part of the relevant section: "You can create a Read Aloud book...

In the wake of last week's barely disguised usability attack on all ebook apps that aren't iBooks, Martin Taylor of eReport has posted a call to arms against Apple. "It’s now time for publishers to step in and challenge Apple for the sake of the long term health of the market for ebooks and reading," he writes. "The way to stop Apple doing more harm is simple: refuse to supply it with the key titles its iBookstore needs to present a credible offering." It can be done. Publishers set a precedent for collective action a year ago when they threatened Amazon...

Apple has enough money to buy pretty much any company it wants right now, so it's both easy and fun to speculate on potential acquisitions like Hulu. (Personally, I prefer this suggestion that the company should build its own mobile data network). But yesterday the website Boy Genius Report published a tip "from an unproven source" that said Apple and Barnes & Noble were in negotiations. BGR writes that it "makes a whole lot of sense," because Apple could merge B&N's ebook business into iBooks and kill off the popular Nook Color. But don't take it too seriously; one analyst...

Kobo released an update to its iOS app today, and as we expected, direct access to the Kobo Store has disappeared. You can still shop for ebooks using Kobo's own website, but you'll have to navigate to it yourself. You'll also have to create any new accounts via the website—Apple is determined not to make this easy on any iBooks competitors or their prospective customers. Via The Digital Reader...

The publishers' long-running line of early childhood reading books, featuring characters such as the Berenstain Bears, Frog and Toad, and Splat the Cat, have been converted into digital versions with professional narration and word highlighting. The ebook editions are only avaiable through Apple and Barnes & Noble. Here's more info from their press release: HarperCollins Children's Books announced today the launch of the I CAN READ program on Apple's iBookstore and Barnes & Noble's NOOK Bookstore. I CAN READ is the first complete early reader program available digitally, with eighty titles out now and many more to come. I CAN READ...

From the email: The Open University has developed an eBook workflow that automates the production of media-rich, interactive eBooks optimised for iBooks. Gerald Schmidt, Project Manager, Content & Authoring, The Open University, will describe the open source tools that enable the conversion of the university's OpenLearn open educational resources to eBooks on iTunes U. The Open University (www.open.ac.uk) is the UK's largest university with more than 250,000 students. Audience members can participate by submitting their questions during the webcast. Gerald is currently moderating a MacLearning.org ePub / eBooks Forum if you want to talk to Gerald before or after the webcast.  Join us on Wednesday, June 22...

From the description.  I wonder if there is a similar service for Amazon - as I won't buy anything from the iBookstore and force myself to read on only Apple products.  For those who don't mind, though: BookWatch searches the iBookStore® for you and notifies you when there are new book releases from your favorite authors. iAd Supported Version To get started, just tap the add button on the top left and start typing the author's name. Adding authors is a breeze with author suggestions. BookWatch then downloads the authors entire catalog and shows you the latest book release. After you've...