Apple is using DRM to prevent a you from using iBooks if your iPhone is jailbroken. This means you can legally purchase an ebook from the iBookstore but then be unable to read it on a jailbroken device.

If I wanted to read an ebook on a jailbroken iPhone, I’d simply use the Amazon Kindle app or the Barnes & Noble app (or any number of ebook reading apps out there), rather than fooling around with Apple’s foolish DRM games. Apple would just lose out on the lost ebook revenue.

The way Apple implements this little bit of DRM is quite clever. Mediabistro’s eBooknewser offers a nice summary of how it works:

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What is Apple thinking? They have changed their App Store TOS so that content providers will have to remove the link to their website to purchase content, subscriptions, etc.

Furthermore, Apple is requiring that apps, such as the Kindle for example, provide an option to purchase ebooks within the app, giving Apple a 30% cut of the revenue.

This ComputerWorld article sums it up nicely:

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It seems that every news outlet in America is predicting that Borders will be filing for bankruptcy any day now. The news is not surprising, given Borders’ deepening debt problems and that pesky issue of publishers not shipping books to their stores.

Ebooks are a real wildcard in the Borders saga. Some are blaming ebooks for the decline of the second largest bookstore in the US. Others are saying that ebooks are the only way Borders can survive. And others are saying that if the chain liquidates, it will only help the ebook market.

In other words, ebooks represent two sides of the same coin for the bookseller. An article from the Wall Street Journal examines this further.

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In another sign that ebooks are becoming a formidable force in the publishing world, Hachette Book Group says that ebook sales grew 138% in 2010, according to Mediabistro. Yet Lagardere Publishing, the owner of Hachette Book Group, saw an overall decline in sales.

A big reason for the boost in ebook sales, aside from their growing popularity, is that Hachette is bundling different ebook titles together from the same genre or author (via Wall Street Journal):

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I don’t even know why I respond to superficial criticism of ebooks anymore. Yet I still feel the need to defend ebooks against petty arguments against them.

Ebooks are changing the way we write, publish and read. Whether people like it or not, ebooks are here to stay. In the technological world we live in, progress is inevitable.

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Apple gave their eReading app iBooks an update today. There’s really nothing exciting about this particular update (not that I could find).

The most important part of the update is in the stability and performance areas. A post on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) says that books load faster and there’s no lag when turning pages.

I have updated my iBooks app but haven’t taken it for a spin around the block yet. If I notice anymore improvements, I’ll mention them here. Stay tuned…

When digital music became mainstream, people were ripping all their CDs to their computers so they could make them part of their digital collection. Now it appears that people in Japan are doing the same, only with their print books.

To help them convert print to digital are several start-up companies that take the time-consuming task of scanning those books for their customers.

An article from the Sydney Morning Herald explains that publishers aren’t keeping up with consumer demand:

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I don’t know how many times I’ve repeated this here on Brad’s Reader, but it’s worth repeating again: Ebook piracy is not the problem, it’s a symptom of the problem.

What is the problem? I think it’s high ebook prices, publishers/authors refusing to release titles as ebooks and to a lesser extent, strict DRM. If you give consumers the ebooks they want at a fair price (i.e. $9.99 or below) without trying to lock them down, piracy will become less of an issue.

Yes, there will always be piracy. There will always be a small group of people who will refuse to pay for ebooks. Same goes with music and movies.

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Responding to an increasing amount of complaints, the Office of Fair Trading (OTF) launched an investigation into ebook prices. The agency says they are seeing whether certain publishers and retailers have made anticompetitive pricing deals.

The investigation is still in its early stages, so there’s not a lot of details. But it is being reported that the new agency pricing model is under the spotlight:

The OFT will not specify exactly what the investigation entails, but a report in the Wall Street Journal claims that it relates to the “agency pricing model” which sees publishers set the price of e-books, as opposed to retailers. This model is used by Amazon’s Kindle store and Apple’s iBooks store in partnership with publishers including HarperCollins and Penguin.

A similar investigation has been launched in the US by the Connecticut Attorney General last August.

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Here’s something I haven’t considered: If Borders goes into bankruptcy oblivion, what happens to the ebooks in customer accounts from the Borders’ ebookstore? The question is further complicated by the growing use of the ‘agency model’, where publishers are allowed to set ebook prices rather than retailers.

If Borders goes belly-up, publishers could find themselves in a pickle. I found this post on Mike Cane’s blog that explains the problem:

Until Apple entered the picture and proposed the Agency Model, which allowed publishers to set their prices. The Agency Model changed the entire chain of liability. Publishers are saying, in effect,