Apple Nets 350K Textbook Downloads In 3 Days

Posted by Soulskill on Monday January 23, 2012 @10:57AM from the but-what-do-we-leave-on-the-teacher's-desk dept.

redletterdave writes "On Jan. 19, Apple introduced iBooks 2, its digital solution to the physical textbook. In the first three days of release, users have downloaded more than 350,000 e-textbooks from the new platform, and more than 90,000 users have downloaded the authoring tool to make those e-textbooks, called iBooks Author. It makes sense that Apple's iBooks 2 platform is taking off in such a short period of time; there is very little merit to the physical textbook, and the education industry has been waiting for a viable solution like this for some time. Physical textbooks lack portability, durability, accessibility, consistent quality, interactivity and searchability, and they're not environmentally friendly."

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... and the EULA for the authoring tool... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-23 11:02 · Score: 5, Informative

forces you to sell only via the Apple Store. So, Apple will make 30% on every text book sold which is written in their new tool, and likey 30% on every new, yearly addition which changes a picture here or there and yet charges full price (what, you don't think this odious practice from physical books will make it into electronic textbooks?)
Talk about vendor lock-in.
And good luck trying to sell your book at the end of the year back to the Apple Store...