Apple to promote iPad ebooks, iBookstore at BookExpo America conference

I use my iPad for reading books and have yet to purchase anything from iBooks. I'd really like to since it has a more elegant user-interface, but the prices compared to what Amazon offers has usually been about 50% less. I can't justify that much of a price increase, so I've been using Amazon's Kindle app but it is rather clunky compared to iBooks.

Presumably the Kindle apps and WhisperSync mean that you can read your Kindle books more seamlessly across your Apple devices than you can iBooks books. This looks like an easy thing for Apple to duplicate on their own platforms, and would make Apple devices into an eco-system, but it's not there. It seems strangely awkward.

Most of the time, that's not true. A few times, books were cheaper in iBooks. I use the Nook app, the Kindle app, and iBooks. It's difficult to tell who will have the lowest price. But the problems are much more annoying than that.

There are a number of authors who write series, and even for those who don't, having some of their books in each reader is a royal pain. In order to know where the last book is, and what the name is before buying the latest is a problem, unless you buy all of an author's books from the same store.

I'm hoping that some day, we can move books between all the readers, or that one reader comes out that will allow us to buy books from all of the major stores. Right now, there is nothing like that around that works well enough, or at a decent pricing.

Lose the DRM and I'll start buying. Simple as that. They made the right decision with music, still awaiting the right decision on books (and video).

Funny. Personally I much prefer the Kindle App. iBooks is big on eye candy, but to me Amazon have really made a nice eReader app - everything just seems so much more thought out.
Its the little things like being able to reverse screen so the text is white with minimal effort, while on iBooks I have to go and change the whole system to do so.

This is quite uncharacteristic of Apple, as usually their apps kick arse, but I would choose the Kindle app every time. I hope Apple can rectify this with some updates.

Why? I think DRM on an e-book is quite reasonable. Have you actually SEEN how much physical books cost these days?

apple would love to lose it, but the decision is in the hands of the publishers and studios. apple doesn't have leverage like they did when the labels wanted variable pricing that they, not Apple, controlled

I have. I buy books at Costco, $4.65 to $6.75, more or less. So why am I paying $9.95 for an e-book?

Amazon's 58%
Barnes & Noble 27%
Apple 9%
Borders-Kobo's 7%

Doesn't that add up to 101%?

I'm in favour of DRM for electronic content, if they can make the DRM mechanism reflect real-world fair use, which I think is doable but not done.

One way or another, the content owners will lobby for checks against unfair copying and distribution. It can either happen at the point of use, or they can invade your private life. As I understand it, the providers have lobbied ( and paid ) our ( corrupt ) politicians to abuse anti-terror laws to check our devices for copied music at airports, demanding our passwords. This reveals the true axis of evil: Al Qaeda and the RIAA.

Fortunately, iBooks offers the entire Gutenberg Project library and other royalty-free classics for free. There are thousands of read-worthy classics I have yet to read, so I'm pretty well set.

Here's a recent experience in our household of 2 adults and 3 children -- using iPads and the iBook reader.

The book we read was unavailable on iBooks or in ePub format. But, I found the text on the Web, copied it into Pages, saved it as ePub, dragged it into iTunes and synced it to the iPads (along with all our other iBooks).


It was cold and rainy, but we had a warm fire going.

A good time for a family reading session...

But we only had 30 minutes between the end of Jeopary and the beginning of Chuck on TV.

Usually we would pass around a single book and take turns reading -- discussing the pronouncation and meaning of difficult words, etc.


This time it was different -- we all have iPads.


The players:
-- Mom age 46
-- Daughter age 15
-- Older son age 12
-- Younger son age 11
-- Grandpa Wonderful age 71

The challange: To group-read aloud, and understand, The Ballad Of the Ice-Worm Cocktail -- by Robert W. Service (suitable for age-level 14-15 -- about 16 pages in ePub iBook format.


We started.

Even though we had each used the iBooks app before, we ran through a brief demo of the app's features and settings -- so we were all on the same page (pun).

At my instruction, we each press-held the word "Ballad" in the title, displaying several options -- then used the dictionary to look up the meaning of the word,

That blew the 11-year-old son away -- like finding an Easter Egg!

With an understanding of the meaning of "Ballad" and that it required reading with a cadance or meter -- I read aloud, the first paragraph:

"To Dawson Town came Percy Brown from London on the Thames.
A pane of glass was in his eye, and stockings on his stems."


I asked the 11-year-old: What is the meaning of "Thames" (and why is it pronounced temz)?

With help from the dictionary, and group discussion we rejected the first 2 options and settled on the river in England where London is situated.

As an aside I reminded everyone that this story was written in a time before computers, radios, TVs and iPads -- that the people were Gold prospectors in cold Alaska -- and their only form of entertainment was story-telling and drinking in a saloon.


We continued:

Mom asked, to no one in particular: "what does 'A pane of glass was in his eye' mean?"

The 15-year-old daughter offered: "He had a glass eye."

Mom said that it wasn't a glass eye -- rather a single eyeglass to correct the eyesight of a single eye -- a monicle -- because it was cheaper than buying glasses for both eyes.

To see what she meant, at instruction, we each press-held on the iBook page until the search dialog appeared, then we googled "image mr peanut".






Mom read the next few paragraphs, reinforcing the cadence and stopping to explain or discuss where necessary.


Then the kids took turns -- "let me read next" -- "no, it's my turn" -- while the 11-year-old would occasionally read ahead then get side-tracked in the bowels of the dictionary.

So it went for the next 20 minutes -- we all took turns reading aloud with cadence and emphasis (and laughter) -- story-telling, actually. (You should have heard my granddaughter bellow: "The Hell I won't" said Deacon White)

Then, we got to the final paragraph:

"And ere next night his story was the talk of Dawson Town,
But gone and reft of glory was the wrathful Major Brown;
For that ice-worm (so they told him) of such formidable size..."

(I won't spoil the ending


The 15-year-old daughter said they had tried to read this in English class -- but never finished... and she really likes to say the word "formidable".

The 12-year-old read the best he ever has.

The 11-year-old knows how to find the meaning and pronunciation when he reads: "Who in the Murrumbidgee wilds had stalked the kangaroo."

Mom, who is a book/reading lover, was proud... very proud.


Grandpa Wonderful saw his investment in iPads for the family reap dividends galore!


...we read aloud, told the story of, enjoyed and understood: The Ballad Of the Ice-Worm Cocktail (everything was good) -- and still had a few moments before watching Chuck!


The following day, when the 15-year-old got home from school she said: "That was so fun -- can we read again tonight?"

Dick, that was a wonderful story ... it actually brought tears (happy tears) to my eyes. Thanks for sharing.

When our daughter was 2 or 3, my wife and I would sit her on our laps, and read aloud when we read the newspaper, magazines or books. She didn't understand anything, but was soothed and entertained by the sound of our voice.

i think that this engaged my daughter in reading at an early age. She reads about a book a week -- Just finished Atlas Shrugged, with Crime and Punishment her next biggie.


The family group-reading together, aloud, is a great tradition -- especially if you train your self to:

1) pause at the end of a phrase or sentence -- give the listeners time to absorb what was said
2) read ahead to yourself during the pause
3) understand the words -- the meaning, the pronunciation, the emphasis
4) then say the words aloud -- as if you, not the author, are telling your story


The iPads are handy -- because everyone has a copy of the book -- and can follow along, parse and: mentally form/hear/learn how to "tell the story"

The iBook app is great because you can resolve questions (meaning, spelling, pronunciation, etc.) with little distraction.

But the biggest benefit, IMO, is reading aloud and trying to tell it as a story -- this actually benefits the reader/story-teller as much as the listeners.

Edit:

Here's an example of what I mean by story-telling -- by one of the best:

Jean Shepherd - The Shooting Of Dan McGrew

...It's....just....so...artificial.

First the story: "The Ballad of the Ice-Worm Cocktail" - I mean really? I was a kid not so long ago and I would have found it impossible to give a crap about that rhyme. There's nothing wrong with it - it's got some lovely bits it in it - but when I was 15 I hated being given things to read: I much preferred reading something that I'd bought with my own money.

Second is the amount of time you spent making the thing: first result on Bing, copy into some Word clone - time taken: 30 seconds. Exporting as ePub and importing into iTunes: I'll give that 2 minutes. Then, you've got to sync it to five iPads. Conservatively estimating that it takes you about 4 minutes to plug in, wait, wade through warnings, sync, wait and unplug each iPad, you're looking at around 20 mins of mindless tedium. But did you think that maybe - at that 30 second mark - you could have hit the 'Print' button? Time saved: about 19 minutes. That's time that you could have spent with your childen. And what's more: the print-out is theirs - forever. They can doodle in the margins, pin it on their bedroom door, crumple it up and throw it in the bin...

Third is the whole iPad thing. Steve must had been smiling wryly when he and Apple's marketing dept came up with the word "Magic" to describe the iPad. No-one I know attempts to justify the purchase, they all understand they could read email and play games on what they had - without paying ~450 monetary units for it. When "Grampa Wonderful" "reaps dividends", I'm sure he's really regretting spending 2000 monetary units to save you about 32 sheets of paper. Let's also not forget that spending money on an iPad is essentially converting money into a less useful form (think about it: if you lost your job tomorrow do you think the supermarket would accept tablet computers as payment?) and I think deep down he knows that's $2000 less for someone's education.

Fourth is dependence: Looking everything up is not a substitute for analysing the context. In fact, the whole monocle thing you looked it up just because you could. Benefit gained: zero. That's not the way you encourage to people to think critically. If you don't encourage them to think about what they read and look stuff up, then really that's really nothing more than training them to consume content.

Now let's finish up: I'm not surpised the 15-year-old didn't understand it in her English lesson. She was likely texting, looking out the window, communicating with a colleague, listening the noises which came out of the teacher's mouth or scanning her eyes over some letters. I don't blame her, it's a hard text: it's full of grammatically confusing statements like "According to his story was a hunter of renown". It's not, however, surprising that she managed to understand it at a subsequent read-through if she was supposed to be studying it! The 12-year-old's mental structure's are improving everyday - it's not surprising that his reading's getting better. You probably hadn't heard him read for a while. And the 11-year-old is merely recalling something you showed him how to do 20 minutes previously - it's not surprising that he can remember how it's done. Finally: Mom feels proud because parents do tend to - as an example: whenever my Mum comes to visit me at Uni she's proud of me for cooking my own food! I mean, it's not like operating a cooker is an arduous task.

So in conclusion, I'm not convinced. But I'm glad you had a nice reading session.

I am sorry that you found it so tedious and artificial -- but it is all true.

... Just this moment, I got a text from my granddaughter: "The Hell I Will"


The kids seemed to enjoy it. And the bit about my granddaughter wanting to read again is true -- She wanted to get "Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe". She actually was put off because her mother had rented Romeo And Juliet Musical for her -- and made her watch that instead of reading.

BTW, the kids get to decide, within reason, what apps and iBooks the family buys. If one wants an app or book that no one else wants -- he pays for it himself.

My daughter believes that in her home -- books should be as ubiquitous as fresh fruit,


I had already done the conversion to ePub -- but it was faulty. Then I discovered that Apple's Pages will save in ePub format.

As for syncing.

All the iPads are synced, once a day, to a single Mac/iTunes -- mine. That way all get to share apps and iBooks. It's pretty economical when you amortize the cost of apps and iBooks across 6 iPads and 5 iPhones (3 iPhones are hand-me-down older, SIMless models used as iPod Touches)

Everyone hands in their iPad and iPhone at bedtime -- and they are not available again until after school.

In the morning, I update all the apps on iTunes -- then during the day, while I am at my Mac, I sync all the iPads and iPhones, usually 2 or 3 connected at a time. There are no warnings to wade through and the whole process is quite easy -- as it runs while I am monitoring the stock market, surfing, etc. (I am syncing iPads and iPhones as I write this).


BTW, with iBooks each person can highlight, annotate with postit notes, copy/paste then email and AirPrint (Non-DRM ePub content)... so no disadvantage there.

It appears that you've never experienced group-reading aloud -- that is sad because it is an uplifting experience, if done properly.

Before we even used iPads -- back in the pass-the-book-around era, we still did group-reading aloud,

The youngest son was getting very low grades in reading. Over several sessions we taught him the pause, take your time, read ahead to yourself, think about it, then say what you read as if telling a story -- your story.

It was a little hurky-jerky at first, but with practice he became very good at it -- now, when he reads aloud, he tells a story -- as opposed to a monotone get-through-it-as-fast-as-I-can. He is now among the best in 5th grade reading. We attribute that to the group-reading-aloud/story-telling.

He is the best reader among the kids in the family


The "someone's education" I care most about are my own!

I am long AAPL and have done quite well -- still hold shares purchased at $17. BTW, AAPL is up about $3.66 1.09% to $339.73.

My investments pay for the iPads.

Actually, all the iPads are 64 GB models -- 3 with 3G. The decision to spend the extra money was easy -- more apps and content on the iPads. And, I don't plan on buying PSPs, TVs or computers for each. All can share the family computer if necessary. We have a minimum NetFlix and StreamToMe for our iTunes library of 800 videos and 10,000 songs.

When we go on long trips, or they go with their Dad for the weekend, we preload the iPads with movies for each -- each syncs to a different personal movie folder, as well as common movie folders.

It is all quite easy to setup and maintain.


We discuss it first to see if we can figure it out -- then look it up if we can't -- or for reinforcement.

The alternative is to skip-over the word or phrase -- possibly making the author's words or plot meaningless.

We are training them to understand and communicate. The 12-year-old had an undetected hearing deficiency as an infant -- and continuously struggles to overcome a speech impairment.




So, as a test, try reading it aloud.

I believe you would have difficulty taking the logical leap from "a pane of glass was in his eye" to a monocle -- what does a kid know about a monocle? In a group read we stop and discuss things -- we were able to describe what a monocle was, what it was for! Then show them how to reinforce that newly-gained knowledge by looking it up. Mr. Peanut was just a contrived shortcut to save a little time -- the kids mom planned this in advance.

Then when you run across "Who in the Murrumbidgee wilds had stalked the kangaroo." and don't know what Murrumbidgee is (desert, jungle, mountain?) you are comfortable looking it up, finding the meaning and pronunciation and understanding what the author means.

The same goes for "plus-fours" -- how is anyone unfamiliar with the term going to figure it out, logically?

BTW, we did discuss the leather patch -- and why it was there. Also why, in those days, they often had leather patches on their elbows -- to save wear and tear and make the garment last longer.

We didn't get into why there are buttons on the cuffs of suit coats/jackets -- but we will, when the opportunity arises

Anyway, as I said in a later post -- the iPad is just a tool... but a very useful one in teaching people how to read, understand and communicate.

Fully agree with Dick on the value of reading apps on tablets. When my wife discovered she could long-press on a word while reading her Nook and be taken to the dictionary (as one of several options) it became even more proof that my daughters Mother's Day gift couldn't have been more perfect for her. She now spends at least an hour every evening listening to Pandora while reading (currently Water for Elephants), and no longer having to ask me about words she comes across.

Personally I still enjoy actually holding a real magazine or book in my hands. I'm definitely old school in a number of ways. But readers/tablets that can link to other sources directly from the book, change fonts and sizes (for older eyes), even adjust page color and borders, and be synced to other devices like smartphones and additional tablets can make all the difference in turning today's video/TV kids into readers.

My son is the next one to work on

Well said... in a lot fewer words than I used!