"30,000 titles" would not make an impressive commercial. Amazon.com probably has ten times as many e-books and literally millions of dead trees books for sale.
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iBookstore to Include 30,000 Free eBooks From Project Gutenberg?
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As far as the formatting of Project Gutenberg's books goes, I'm trying to help with that, and hope others will join me. I'm writing software that converts from the Creole wiki markup format to CreoleXML, and from there to XHTML and others. I need other volunteers to help out with both the code (PHP) and converting books to wiki format.
If anyone's interested, I'm currently hosting this project at http://writerpilot.com/
Thanks,
Zoe.
If this will be available in the UK I would happily donate a little for each book, seems only fair in my opinion. 
That would be a very nice feature indeed. But chances are that you'll lose your highlighted passages in the book if you upgrade to the corrected version.
Think of it this way; Apple is donating in the form of visibility, advertising and bandwidth. It would be cool if Apple put a link on the entry of these books providing info to the end user on how to donate directly, but it doesn't seem in the spirit of the project for Apple to donate cash.
They would've already done it by now. They don't want to advertise the device as a book reader. They want to keep it as the Do-Everything device.
Apple has more class than that.
Even when books are online, the fixed cost of server and routers and fiber T3 are not cheap, your right that 10 dollars is overdone but even people that do these things would like to see some ROI look at this place we post, if it made less money that say ED department what would be the incentive to keep doing it on a full time bases.
Yep, everything is a biiiiiig giant conspiracy..
Are you implying that those free books are worth less quality wise than books that aren't? And if it is so simple, then why hasn't any of the other online book stores thought of this?
Certainly, if Apple provides them, they can legitimately count them in the number for advertising purposes. That doesn't mean it's a bad thing (it is a good thing) or that Apple shouldn't get credit for doing it. I agree that one can can obtain Gutenbooks and put them on any device fairly easily, but it will be much more convenient to have them delivered this way.
Kindle, by the way, didn't always have free public domain material. There was a time when you had to download it, convert it, and transfer it over yourself. It's not a negligible thing.
I think Apple is providing these because they are classic literary works AND because they can count them in their number. So what, why is this bad?
Barnes and Noble started their eBook store with 500,000 public domain titles that were available for free. I doubt Apple will be shouting about these 30,000 books.
The problem becomes, how does Apple know that's your copy of the book? What if you're in a library scanning books from the shelf?
I would take my iPhone to the bookstore and shoot all codes I could get my hands on...
Somehow I think this won't happen..
Welcome to the Macrumors by the way. Keep the posts coming!
Apple and Money
[JGowan's 2¢]
This IS going to be true. Thousands of free books. Apple gives lots of FREE things away on the iTunes Store: Music, Podcasts, TV shows, Videos, Books, Apps. I'm sorry you have this interpretation. Good news... Apple cares more about their customers than most! Yea!
I will use your post to shine a few points about Apple that I feel is relative to money, etc. -- Relevant stuff:
From the iPad Announcement in late January 2010 -- Steve Jobs (after sharing the news of their $15.6B 4th Quarter: "What that means is that Apple is an over-50-billion-dollar company. Now, I like to forget that; that's not we think about Apple, but it is pretty amazing."
I think if all Steve Jobs cared was money, we would see far less innovation. They wouldn't update their core products nearly as often and just save their R&D money. I think that Apple, at its, er uh... core (ha) is concerned with simply being the best. Whatever it is they put their hands to, they want it to be the gold standard. And even when they're #1 at something, they know that it is their job to top even themselves. 2010 Apple has to beat 2009 Apple in every way possible. Do they make mistakes? Certainly. I hated their last iPod Shuffle, but it's selling very well so what do I know. All-in-all, they're doing what they love and are passionate about leaving a mark on the technology world with every product that finds its way into our hands. Most companies just want to make a lot of money. Apple thinks different.
Specifically -- since you mentioned the rise of music tracks...
They raised the price of the money to appease the Record companies. The Record Co's just wanted more money. Apple actually wanted to keep the music at 99¢ a track. But, alas...
Also Apple championed for DRM-free tracks over 3 years ago when Steve Jobs released this very well written letter on the subject. Is this the company you're claiming doesn't have it's customers' best interest at heart? I don't think so. While the Record companies won for the additional 29¢ for cherry-picked tracks, Apple stood firm on the $9.99 Album for the majority of those sold on iTunes (exceptions for double albums, etc.). They could've gone up on those as well and started counting extra money, too. But you have to understand,... it is Apple's best interest to keep the content low, so your opinion of them as cash-grabbers for iTunes content is false. They use EVERYTHING sold on iTunes to sell millions and millions of iPhones, iPods and now iPads.
Also, with roughly 50 BILLION dollars in the bank, they don't need our extra 29¢ per track. They've got bigger fish to fry.
They make their money on $2,500 laptops.
[/JGowan's 2¢]
[JGowan's 2¢]
Welcome first-time poster!
This IS going to be true. Thousands of free books. Apple gives lots of FREE things away on the iTunes Store: Music, Podcasts, TV shows, Videos, Books, Apps. I'm sorry you have this interpretation. Good news... Apple cares more about their customers than most! Yea!
I will use your post to shine a few points about Apple that I feel is relative to money, etc. -- Relevant stuff:
From the iPad Announcement in late January 2010 -- Steve Jobs (after sharing the news of their $15.6B 4th Quarter: "What that means is that Apple is an over-50-billion-dollar company. Now, I like to forget that; that's not we think about Apple, but it is pretty amazing."
I think if all Steve Jobs cared was money, we would see far less innovation. They wouldn't update their core products nearly as often and just save their R&D money. I think that Apple, at its, er uh... core (ha) is concerned with simply being the best. Whatever it is they put their hands to, they want it to be the gold standard. And even when they're #1 at something, they know that it is their job to top even themselves. 2010 Apple has to beat 2009 Apple in every way possible. Do they make mistakes? Certainly. I hated their last iPod Shuffle, but it's selling very well so what do I know. All-in-all, they're doing what they love and are passionate about leaving a mark on the technology world with every product that finds its way into our hands. Most companies just want to make a lot of money. Apple thinks different.
Specifically -- since you mentioned the rise of music tracks...
They raised the price of the money to appease the Record companies. The Record Co's just wanted more money. Apple actually wanted to keep the music at 99¢ a track. But, alas...
Also Apple championed for DRM-free tracks over 3 years ago when Steve Jobs released this very well written letter on the subject. Is this the company you're claiming doesn't have it's customers' best interest at heart? I don't think so. While the Record companies won for the additional 29¢ for cherry-picked tracks, Apple stood firm on the $9.99 Album for the majority of those sold on iTunes (exceptions for double albums, etc.). They could've gone up on those as well and started counting extra money, too. But you have to understand,... it is Apple's best interest to keep the content low, so your opinion of them as cash-grabbers for iTunes content is false. They use EVERYTHING sold on iTunes to sell millions and millions of iPhones, iPods and now iPads.
Also, with roughly 50 BILLION dollars in the bank, they don't need our extra 29¢ per track. They've got bigger fish to fry.
They make their money on $2,500 laptops.
[/JGowan's 2¢]
If this is true this would be amazing. Sadly knowing Apple and Steve Jobs, we will have to pay for everything. It is just like when the had to raise the price of pretty much all of the songs on iTunes to $1.29 they just wanted more money.
I would guess that these volunteers donated their time, effort and expertise so that these books would reach a large audience. When a company comes along to increase the reach of the project through convenience, are those volunteers supposed to get angry and feel exploited or should they feel elated that their efforts are worth even more now?
Read properly before you post. It says in the article that the books were free when they same them in the iBook store.
What is with all these conspiracy theories?
It makes perfect sense for Apple to provide these books. It would give the iBook store some viability and momentum for those regions where Apple has not yet made any arrangements with publishers. Even though they would be free...
Wow, I didn't even think it was possible to misread my post... I'm glad it's happening, but a donation would be nice. Period.
Yes, just like iTunes charges you for downloading podcasts. Wait, it does not, podcasts are free...
The irrational hatred towards big companies in this land of capitalism is mind boggling. There are enough reasons to regulate certain aspects of the market to ensure competition, truth in advertising, cut unfair government subsidies etc, why add additional ones?
What makes you think that they actually didn't?
If anyone in Project Gutenberg is now pissed off because they didn't get a donation from Steve, than they got into the project for the wrong reasons.
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And to quote Double G:
I'd like a woman with thin ankles, but when I come home there is my wife...
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