Publishers now on board include Houghton Mifflin, Simon & Schuster, Random House, Hachette and Penguin Group USA.
Having these big names is a big step forward for iTunes itself in becoming an e-book shop and the iPhone in becoming a legitimate e-book reader and competitor to products like the Kindle and the Sony E-Reader.
The first official books will begin to roll out Monday and include titles such as Stephenie Meyer's Twilight, Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass and a number of others by Christopher Paolini, Brad Meltzer and Scott Westerfeld.
There are already several e-book readers in the app store, as well as a number of out-of-copyright e-books, but ScrollMotions product is unique in that these are stand-alone and newer in-copyright titles and best-selling novels.
Each book is a separate application using Scroll Motion's new reader technology called Iceberg and is wrapped only in the FairPlay iTunes DRM, putting Apple directly into the e-book business by allowing them to pick up a certain percentage of each sale.
This is a business model that works on their business model, said co-founder Josh Koppel.
Unlike other e-book applications, each title keeps the same pagination as the print book, while still allowing the reader to zoom in and scroll down as well as skipping ahead with a feature called “Book Skim." Current functionality also includes note taking, text search and the ability to purchase additional books using a recommendation service over a Wi-Fi connection.
Other e-book reader apps in iTunes include Stanza, eReader, Bookshelf and Classics, which all either include only out-of-copyright books, or require a user to purchase new books separately from an online store. Fictionwise recently announced that it would make 40,000 of its e-books available for viewing in Stanza by licensing out its eReader format to the app's creator, Lexcycle.
More and more publishers are turning to mobile devices as a new reading platform. Penguin has a mobile app and recently unveiled a new digital initiative, Random House also plans to offer a few free e-books on Stanza, and HarperCollins has struck a deal with Nintendo to bring a collection of classics to the Nintendo DS.
For more information contact All About Jazz.
