News and Analysis

Apple’s Easy iBook Author Tool

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As everyone predicted, Apple released an ez-iBook maker and there's controversy over it's features and possible lock-in since you can only publish to the iBookstore. Admittedly that's not surprising as it's a specialized ePub format so you can only read it as an iBook (that and I'm not seeing a lot of anger over Kindle . . .).

So what do I think?

  • This was inevitable. Apple had a platform and a book system and of course an authoring system was coming.
  • Content is king, but delivery pays the bills. This is also an inevitable financial model. Right now being a gatekeeper pays.
  • Amazon is going to follow suit so fast it'll make your head spin.
  • I'm not sure what, if anything, Microsoft will do.
  • This might mean more effective freelance writers – and more jobs.
  • This also means that rating systems are going to be even more important, as is good relations. So build that author platform.
  • Have I noted we REALLY NEED a universal book format everyone uses? We do.

– Steven Savage

SOPA, PIPA, Megaupload, and Other Things That Sound Like Band Names.

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OK, let's see where we are in the whirlwind area of internet rights, laws, actions, and more.

PIPA and SOPA are shelved – for now. There's a push for the OPEN Act which has some intriguing ideas on dealing with IP (go read).  Do not expect this to go away.

If you've been living under a large chunk of solid rocklike material, you may have missed the shutdown of Megaupload and the retaliation by Anonymous. The entire Megaupload story is one I think we don't know all of, and the timing is odd (since all it does is make people more anti-SOPA), and I'm not sure about the filings.

And, seriously, I've already seen people blaming the Megaupload shutdown on SOPA, so if this was some "pro-SOPA" stunt (which I doubt), it's a massive backfire.  Also, this may be Anonymous' largest attack yet.

– Steven Savage