It looks increasingly like
Apple will announce on Thursday some form of ebook publishing platform.
We speculated back on Jan. 3 that
this might be the case. ArsTechnica is now reporting that Apple will release a
"GarageBand for
ebooks" - essentially a tool that would allow users to create and publish
their own books. There is something about this rumor that makes sense in that
several of Apple's product, such as iPhoto or Aperture, already allow users to create and
publish books and one has to wonder what Apple plans to do with iWeb which
allows for easy web publishing.
I would also look for some sort of technical standard embrace -
probably the ePUB3 standard
which, among other things, allows for embedding multimedia using
HTML5.
In other ebook news, Collioquy announced one of
the first ebooks to use the "choose your own adventure" format.
Definitely an exciting time in the sector, which is why it earned one of
our top trends to watch in 2012.
5:17pm Update: AppleInsider is quoting Fortune as saying Thursday's event will focus on distribution, not creation with a new tool. So it could be more of an iTunes model in forming distribution agreements with the major publishers. Read more
