An electronic book platform developed by Apple Inc., iBooks, is used in the publishing and book industry. It’s an app and bookstore created specifically for usage on devices from Apple like Mac computers, iPhones, or iPads. The special format of iBooks offers several reading features, a user-friendly interface, plus interactive functions such as multimedia content and landscape images when you rotate your device.
All kinds of books are available via iBooks – bestsellers, self-published titles, classics, or textbooks. Publishers, as well as authors, can distribute their digital content directly to users of Apple devices via this platform. This digital platform has numerous functions: adjustable font sizes, highlighting options, annotation tools, bookmarks, and syncing across multiple devices.
Additionally, the platform supports multimedia elements like embedded video content or images – even interactive widgets are possible!
iBooks helped authors and publishers distribute their content to readers on a new platform, playing a vital role in the ongoing digital transformation of the book industry since 2010. The growth of self-publishing has been one driver of this change. More fundamentally, it is part of the burgeoning market for ebooks.
While iBooks remain a small proportion of the ebook market- dominated by Amazon’s Kindle platform – Apple has been adding more titles to its store and making moves that suggest it wants to make iBooks into a serious player in ebooks.
There are several reasons why iBooks matter. Firstly, they are an attractive way to read books, and secondly, they provide an easy way to track what you’ve read.
However, perhaps most importantly, from Apple’s perspective, ebooks could be seen as loss leaders for other services: someone who buys an ebook through the company’s app will have already signed up for an Apple ID (if they don’t already have one), which will allow them to use other paid services like iCloud storage or iTunes Match.