Scrolling view

You can access the new scrolling view by tapping on the “aA” icon in the upper-right corner, choosing Themes, and then tapping on Scroll. Now, instead of tapping on the screen edges to turn the page, you can just scroll up to keep reading. If you use Instapaper at all, it works just like reading in that app.

The chief problem I have with this view is it felt like I was reading a run-on page. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but my eyes and brain are used to the brief rest that comes with turning the page. Simply put, I did feel myself freaking out a bit when the page went on way longer than I expected. My initial experience was so displeasing that after vowing to give it a solid chance, I just gave up. There are location numbers in the left-hand margin so you can get a vague sense of when page numbers change, but I would like it better if there was also a thin horizontal rule to mark the location changes.

I don’t think the new view is completely useless, though. An ideal use would be reference texts where you need to view a section of text than spans over two pages. For general reading, however, I still find the tap-to-turn method the best. Also, while Apple has said it’s tweaked iOS to detect accidental thumb pressed with the iPad mini, the scrolling text view could be a guaranteed way to make sure you don’t suddenly jump ahead 20 pages.

Purchased Collection

I don’t buy a lot of books via iBooks — Amazon, for the time being, is still my chosen purveyor of reading materials — but recently I needed to look at a book I’d bought through the iBookstore previously. To read it, I needed to go the iBookstore, choose Purchased, and then redownload it from there. It felt like a few steps too many.

I know, I know. I suffered.

One thing Amazon’s Kindle app has done better than iBooks is how it handles books in the cloud. You just click on the Cloud tab and you view a library on non-downloaded books. Now, iBooks works the same way. Go to your Collections list, choose Purchased, and boom, your Books in the Cloud are there.

Unfortunately, one area Amazon still eats Apple’s lunch is how it handles sideloaded content. You can upload damn near anything to your Personal Documents section on Amazon and download it to your various Kindle apps. Apple only supports this feature for books you buy through the iBookstore. If you sideload a lot of content to iBooks (guilty) you still need to use iTunes to sync it to your iOS devices.

Now, that’s suffering.

Sharing passages

Every now and then, I tweet a book I’m reading (or just finished reading). Maybe it’s the bibliophile’s version of sharing what I ate for lunch. How I’d expect a sharing feature to work in a books app is to tweet, Facebook, or whatever, a book I’m reading, some general thoughts, and a shortened link to the book in the retailer’s store.

That’s not how it works in iBooks.

Instead, you highlight a passage, tap Share, and that passage along with your commentary are shared. I rubbed my temples at the various types of passages that may be shared with me on Twitter and Facebook since I have friend with odd tastes in reading.

As with the scrolling text, I’m going to say this feature is the most relevant to people reading texts that need to share passages with others via email. When I was in school, I’d need to share parts of scientific texts with group mates. Schools, book clubs, religious study groups, etc. could find this handy for sharing amongst themselves.

Afterward

I’d put a side bet with myself that we’d see an iBooks update on Tuesday. What with the rumor mill and all, I felt it was easy money. It’s a good thing there wasn’t a point spread, though.

Because while testing these new features out, my thoughts kept tracking along the lines of: this is a full version release? It felt like it should have been called iBooks 2.5; not iBooks 3. Maybe there’s more coming in future dot releases, especially once iTunes 11 is released.

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Overall, the iBookstore contains 1.5 million books that have been downloaded 400 million times so far, Apple CEO Tim Cook said. The main changes to iBooks — which isn’t updated in the iTunes Store as of this writing, but will be today — are a continuous scrolling option for ebooks (so you can just flick instead of turning virtual pages — a feature readers may or may not care about) and better integration with iCloud so that ebooks sync across devices. You can tap to share a passage on Facebook or Twitter. The company also added support for Korean, Chinese and Japanese, bringing the total number of languages supported to over 40, according to Cook.

In addition, Apple’s self-publishing platform iBooks Author, which lets users create graphics-rich ebooks (like textbooks) for iPad, is being updated. It gets new templates, the option to create portrait-only (as opposed to landscape) books and other customization options.

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We saw yesterday that HarperCollins has already entered into new contracts with ebook retailers like Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Google. Now Apple has a new deal with HarperCollins too. This morning I compared the prices of 12 HarperCollins titles across ebook retailers. Like Amazon, Apple is selling new bestselling ebooks for $9.99. (I’ve asked Apple for a comment on its pricing strategy for ebooks and will update this post if I hear back.)

Amazon is already dropping its ebook prices to match Apple’s, in the cases where Apple had priced a book lower than Amazon did. For instance, James Rollin’s Bloodlines and J.A. Jance’s Judgment Call were each $10.94 in the Kindle Store this morning and $9.99 in iTunes. Just a few hours later, both books are down to $9.99 at Amazon as well.

Sure, we can’t draw major conclusions about Apple’s new ebook pricing strategy based on what it’s done with one publisher’s books. But in the case of HarperCollins, we’re already seeing that even if Apple would prefer agency pricing, price bands and MFNs for books, it’s willing to compete on price in the absence of those things. And it has a lot more money to do so than other ebook retailers like Barnes & Noble and Kobo.

Under agency pricing, Apple’s ebook market share hovered around 10 percent. But if customers are drawn to Apple’s new low prices on ebooks, it’s actually possible to envision a world in which Apple’s ebook market share rises — under the terms it didn’t want.

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To start, the three library systems using the program are Colorado’s Douglas County libraries, California-based library network Califa and Internet Archive’s free online library Open Library. In order to work with Library Direct, the libraries have to operate their own ebook lending systems. (Smashwords works separately with digital library distributors Baker & Taylor and 3M Cloud.)

On its blog, Smashwords explains how Library Direct works:

Previously, most libraries relied upon published reviews to guide their acquisition decisions. Under the Smashwords model, the curation is crowdsourced based on aggregated retail sales data drawn from across the Smashwords distribution network which includes the Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, the Diesel eBookstore and others.

Qualifying libraries can select from the top 10,000, 20,000 or any other large number of titles, and can custom-filter the titles by category and price range.

Douglas County, Califa and Open Library will each acquire “some variation” of Smashwords’ top-10,000 bestselling titles, with the three deals totaling around $100,000.

About 45,000 authors and indie publishers work with Smashwords. They can opt out of Library Direct, but they won’t know if their book has been included in the program until it shows up in their Sales and Payment report. “We don’t reveal sales rank on the site, though I suppose now might be a good time to reconsider that,” Smashwords founder and CEO Mark Coker acknowledged in the comments.

Separately, Smashwords officially launched a pricing tool that lets authors set custom pricing for libraries. (Coker told me this feature was coming at BEA.) Of 150 Smashwords authors who completed a survey, over half said they would make their books available to libraries either for free or for a price lower than retail.

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Flat-Out Love by Jessica Park

Here’s a good way for a book to become a New York Times bestseller: Have Jeff Bezos mention it on Amazon’s homepage. That’s what happened to self-published author Jessica Park, whose YA novel Flat-Out Love got a shout-out from Bezos on June 18. This week, it hits the NYT ebook bestseller list for the first time at #25.

Park co-writes the “Gourmet Girl” mystery series with her mom, Susan Conant. That series is traditionally published by Penguin. But Park self-published her first YA novel, Relatively Famous, as well as some e-singles. She tried to sell Flat-Out Love to a traditional publisher “because I had it in my head that I needed that big-time validation,” but when it didn’t work she self-published instead.

Flat-Out Love is $3.99 on … Amazon Kindle | Barnes & Noble Nook | Apple  iBookstore | Smashwords | Kobo | Sony | Diesel

Beautiful Disaster by Jamie McGuire

Another self-pubbed book, Jamie McGuire‘s Beautiful Disaster, is #9 on the NYT ebook list this week and #24 on the USA Today list. Beautiful Disaster, a romance about college students Abby Abernathy and Travis Maddox, is McGuire’s fourth self-published book. It’s told from the point of view of Abby, but now McGuire is working on a version from Travis’s point of view. The Oklahoma mom is also expecting her third child in the fall, so after that she’ll take some time off and then start working on another book, Red Hill, about a mother’s survival of the zombie apocalypse. “It’s going to be fun, I love zombies, and I can’t wait to write it,” she says.

Beautiful Disaster is $2.99 on … Amazon Kindle | Barnes & Noble Nook | Kobo

And don’t miss…

• Sylvia Day’s Bared to You, the first book in an erotic self-published trilogy snapped up by Penguin in May, hits the NYT print paperback list this week at #4. It’s #6 on the ebook list.
• Dean Koontz has written a series of e-singles to build excitement for his upcoming Odd Apocalypse, to be released by Random House on July 31. The first teaser single, “Odd Interlude #1,” was released June 11 and is #15 on the NYT ebook list this week. The second, “Odd Interlude #2,” was released June 18 and is #11 on the NYT ebook list and #27 on the USA Today list. “Odd Interlude #3″ was released on June 25.
• Tracey Garvis-Graves, whose self-published romance “On the Island” was featured in this column in April, is the subject of a Wall Street Journal article this week. Penguin bought On the Island this month in a seven-figure, two-book deal; a paperback edition is due July 10. In the interlude, On the Island dropped off the NYT bestseller list this week.

New York Times bestseller list, week of 7/8/12

Here are the titles in the top-35 that appear on the e-book bestseller list, but not on the print bestseller list (click the link to expand the chart).

USA Today bestseller list, week of 6/28/12

USA Today includes all formats and genres in one list and notes which format of a book sold best. Here are the titles in the top-35 where e-books outsold print (click the link to expand the chart).

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This weekly feature tells the backstory of how one e-book became a bestseller, and highlights bestselling titles that are selling more copies in digital than in print.

This week’s featured title: ”Easy” by Tammara Webber. Webber self-published the book on May 24. It hits the New York Times e-book fiction list this week at #21.

What it’s about: “Easy” is the story of two college students whose lives intersect during a traumatic event, bringing the possibility of love and healing to them both. Webber categorizes “Easy” as a “mature young adult/new adult” title. “That’s a category many authors believe should exist,” she says. “The stories generally feature college-aged characters and are written for readers 17 and up, in line with R-ratings for films and M-ratings for games.” She’s self-published three other books in the category — “Between the Lines,” “Where You Are,” and “Good for You.”

Webber graduated from the University of Texas at Arlington in 2005, and worked there as an academic advisor after graduation. Five months ago, she decided to quit her job to focus on writing full time. “I spent the majority of my life on a college campus in one capacity or another, and I’m very comfortable writing within that age group,” she says. She’s written three other books

How it became a bestseller: “Honestly, I have no idea,” Webber says. “I’ve never paid for advertising for any of my books.” She posted the cover and description on Goodreads in advance of the book’s publication, and about 2,500 users saved it to their shelves before it was released. The book gets a B+ romance review site on Dear Author, where Jane Litte writes, “More like this please.”

“Easy” is $3.99 on … Amazon Kindle | Barnes & Noble Nook | Apple iBookstore

New York Times bestseller list, week of 6/24/12

Here are the titles in the top-35 that appear on the e-book bestseller list, but not on the print bestseller list (click the link to expand the chart).

USA Today bestseller list, week of 6/14/12

USA Today includes all formats and genres in one list and notes which format of a book sold best. Here are the titles in the top-35 where e-books outsold print (click the link to expand the chart).

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Here at paidContent, independent e-bookstore Emily Books‘ Emily Gould and Ruth Curry have argued that DRM is crushing indie booksellers online. And Hachette VP, digital Maja Thomas recently described DRM as “a speedbump” that “doesn’t stop anyone from pirating.”

Still, it may be a long way from this discussion to the first big-six publisher’s actual removal of DRM from its e-books. For now, many readers know they can download free tools to let them read a Barnes & Noble Nook book on a Kindle, or an Apple iBookstore book on a Nook, or a Google book on a Kobo. I’ve used these tools. I recently bought a Google e-book from an independent bookstore, broke the DRM and converted it to read on my Kindle.

Recently, I began chatting with a publishing industry executive about this. This person — who I’ll call Exec — was interested in learning how to break DRM on e-books. About a month later, Exec is a convert and was ready to talk about the experience, albeit anonymously. I don’t think Exec is the only person in the publishing industry breaking DRM on e-books they buy…and those who aren’t doing so already might want to give it a try, if only to see what readers go through. Here is Exec’s story.

I was coming to the conclusion that I wanted to start breaking DRM on e-books I bought so that I could read them on any e-reader, but what pushed me over the top was a terrific post from science-fiction author Charlie Stross, “Cutting their own throats.” He argues that DRM is a way for the Amazons of the world to create lock-in to their platforms.

By that point, I had purchased several dozen e-books from Amazon, and thanks to the fact that Amazon has Kindle apps for all major platforms I didn’t feel all that locked in. But what happens when Amazon decides not to support a platform? Or what if it rolls out new features on Kindle e-readers but doesn’t make those features available on the Kindle apps?

I had also bought an e-book from Apple and quickly realized the options there were even more limited. You’ll probably never see an iBooks app for Android, for example. I decided it was time for me to take control and not let the retailer lock me in.

I had thought about breaking DRM before, but had never done so. A key reason why I didn’t is that I want to honor the IP rights of publishers. The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized: I bought the book, and now I want to be able to read it on any device I choose.

I want to be clear about how I’ve been using these unlocked books. I’m not sharing them with anyone. They’re all just for my use. I’m not putting them on a torrent, or even sharing them with family or friends.

I believe this is justified because I realize that when I buy an e-book from Amazon, I’m really buying a license to that content, not the content itself. This is ridiculous, by the way. I feel as if e-book retailers are simply hiding behind that philosophy as a way to further support DRM and scare publishers away from considering a DRM-free world. I’m not going to say where I work, or anything about my company, but I will say that I don’t think DRM is good for the publisher, author or customer. Don’t pro-DRM publishers realize this is one of the key complaints from their customers? I’ve heard plenty of customers tell me that e-book prices need to be low because they’re only buying access to the content, not fully owning it. That needs to change.

The actual process of breaking the DRM was pretty easy. There are plenty of how-to resources that are only a Google search away from you. I’ve now unlocked books from both Amazon and Apple, and I ran into minor hiccups with both. But a bit of digging online and help from a trusted friend got me through it. Now I can read those books on any device I want to. My advice to newbies is to not give up. If you run into a problem, look around and I bet you’ll find the answer online. I think most readers would be able to do this easily. It just requires a bit of detective work and not giving up if you hit a roadblock.

Do I feel “evil”? No, not really. If I was giving these books away, I would, but I’m the only person using them.

I’m not aware of any other publishers who are doing this. Then again, I’m sure anyone who is would like to keep that confidential, just like me. And I think publishers should try it out so that they can see just how much of a waste DRM is. In about 15 minutes, anyone can unlock just about any e-book out there.

A month or so in, breaking DRM has become a regular part of my e-reading experience. I don’t even think twice now whether I can only read this book on that platform. They’re all options for me. I plan to unlock every book I buy from now on.

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No changes until June at the earliest

Simon & Schuster, Hachette and HarperCollins agreed to settle with Justice. If the settlement is approved — following a 60-day comment period — those three publishers must terminate existing agreements with Apple’s iBookstore within seven days. In addition, as the Competitive Impact Statement on the settlement explains, the three settling publishers must terminate contracts with other retailers (like Amazon and Barnes & Noble) that contain any “restrictions on an e-book retailer’s ability to set the retail price of any e-book” and any most favored nation clauses. Those MFN clauses — which can be found in all agency publishers’ contracts with retailers, not just the contracts with Apple — state that no other retailer can charge a lower e-book price.

Publishers must terminate the contracts with retailers other than Apple “as soon as each contract permits” — i.e., when the contract expires — but the retailers also have the option to terminate the contracts “on just 30 days notice.” After the original contracts are terminated, the settling publishers may enter into new agreements with retailers (including Apple).

Under those new agreements, for the next two years, retailers may set, change or lower e-book prices and may offer discounts and other promotions “to encourage consumers to purchase one or more e-books.”

After two years, the settling publishers may once again enter into agency pricing agreements that restrict retailers from setting, changing, or lowering e-book prices. However, price MFN clauses are prohibited for five years.

OK, I just want to know what it means for e-book prices

Readers are likely to see lower prices on e-books published by HarperCollins, Hachette and Simon & Schuster — at least at Amazon, which expressed its glee over the settlement. But you won’t see those lower e-book prices until at least June — remember there’s that 60-day waiting period, and then publishers and retailers have to enter into new contracts. It’s in Amazon’s best interest to enact the new contracts as quickly as possible so that it can start discounting the settling publishers’ e-books, as it has said it plans to do. Other e-book retailers, like Barnes & Noble and Kobo, are likely to want to enter into new contracts quickly as well so that they are on a more even playing field with Amazon. They may not be able to afford to discount a wide range of e-books as deeply as Amazon can, but they will want that option.

As soon as the new contracts are in place (and Justice will be holding onto a copy of each of those contracts), let the discounting begin. Forrester analyst James McQuivey told Digital Book World last week that he expects Amazon to discount e-books slowly and strategically, starting with bestsellers. Publishing industry consultant Mike Shatzkin, on the other hand, believes Amazon “will do the splashiest discounting they possibly can, making the point as loudly as possible that they deliver the lowest prices to the consumer and daring their competiton to match them.”

McQuivey and Shatzkin may both be right. Amazon may not deeply discount all of the titles it carries from HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Hachette, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see some shockingly cheap bestsellers from those publishers — think massive summer promotions where big titles by authors like James Patterson, Jodi Picoult and Nicholas Sparks are $1.99.

Bundles, buy-one-get-one-free and more stuff you haven’t seen before

Justice notes that agency pricing “prevented e-book retailers from experimenting with innovative pricing strategies…such as offering e-books under an ‘all-you-can-read’ subscription model where consumers would pay a flat monthly fee,” bundles or buy-one-get-one-free promotions. The settlement opens the door for those types of promotions on Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster titles.

For example, retailers could bundle frontlist and backlist titles from those publishers for a flat fee. They could offer a free e-book with the purchase of a print book. They could offer, say, romance or mystery bundles with titles from multiple publishers. They could even give e-books away for free. And, presumably, Amazon can start including Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster titles in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library for Amazon Prime members — if it does what it did with titles from some other publishers and pays the wholesale price each time an e-book is borrowed. (In other words, the three settling publishers wouldn’t have to agree to offer their books in the KOLL. Amazon can now just go ahead and do it.)

What about Apple’s iBookstore?

Apple’s iBookstore launched with agency pricing in effect, and it does not sell e-books from non-agency publishers. (That’s why, for instance, you still can’t find The Hunger Games — published by non-agency publisher Scholastic — in the iBookstore.) So it will be very interesting to see how Apple responds to the settlement. If it simply removes Simon & Schuster, Hachette and HarperCollins titles from its shelves without negotiating new contracts — yes, this would mean Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography, published by Simon & Schuster, would no longer be available through iTunes — it will be losing a large part of its catalog.

If Apple agrees to negotiate new contracts that don’t require agency pricing, it could also make agreements with the many publishers who have not been able to sell their books in the iBookstore before. That would mean a much wider book selection for iBookstore shoppers.

What will I see at Kobo, Barnes & Noble and other non-Amazon e-book retailers?

Barnes & Noble, Kobo and other e-book retailers will be under immense pressure to discount Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster e-books to the same prices that Amazon offers. Keep in mind, though, that these stores have survived so far without always matching Amazon’s prices on titles from non-agency publishers. The settlement puts more titles from big bestselling authors in play, but Kobo and B&N do not necessarily have to match on every price in order to stand some ground against Amazon. (That said, the settlement makes their lives harder, not easier.)

I’d expect to see B&N and Kobo rolling out increased loyalty programs and other perks to try to keep readers shopping with them. For instance, Barnes & Noble could offer two free titles to anyone who buys a new Nook. They could start other membership, loyalty or subscription programs. Barnes & Noble already has the ability to bundle e-books with print transactions from its in-store cash registers and might start offering more e-book specials to in-store shoppers.

Barnes & Noble and Kobo could also turn their attention to the titles that Amazon is paying less attention to — say a HarperCollins backlist book. They could run special promotions or reading groups around those books. (Amazon could do this, too, of course.)

Retailers could have been doing many of these things all along, but non-Amazon players are going to feel the pressure to innovate quickly. They may get added support from the settling publishers (in terms of promotion, marketing suggestions, etc.) to the extent that that is not forbidden by the settlement.

Will DRM go away?

Many — including Ruth Curry and Emily Gould of Emily Books, here on paidContent — are arguing that publishers’ best tool against Amazon is to drop DRM on their titles. Science fiction author Charlie Stross, in a much-read post, writes, “If the major publishers switch to selling ebooks without DRM, then they can enable customers to buy books from a variety of outlets and move away from the walled garden of the Kindle store.” As GigaOM’s Mathew Ingram has argued, publishers see a feasible model for removing DRM in Pottermore.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if at least one big-six publisher announces plans to drop DRM this year — Hachette’s Maja Thomas hinted at it recently — but the actual implementation of the new policy could take awhile as it would likely require negotiations with literary agents as well as the implementation of more robust direct sales systems from publishers’ own sites.

What doesn’t change

Agency pricing itself has not been declared illegal. Publishers who enacted agency pricing later — namely, Random House — can keep using the model. They don’t have to enter into new contracts. In addition, Macmillan and Penguin are fighting the lawsuit and can continue selling e-books under the agency model until a settlement or decision is reached (unless a judge explicitly forbids them to use the model before that).

Random House could, of course, renegotiate its contracts and remove agency pricing if it thinks that its titles will be at a disadvantage against cheaper non-agency titles from HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins. But since agency pricing leaves it in Random House’s power to discount books across retailers, we might simply see deeper and more discounts coming from Random House itself.

And if Random House doesn’t deeply discount big titles from bestselling authors — but those titles stay at or near the top of bestseller lists anyway — that will support the belief that readers are willing to pay a premium for books by certain authors.

Some limits

Amazon cannot now, for example, make every single HarperCollins title it carries free (even if it were inclined to do so). When it comes time for Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins and Hachette to negotiate their new contracts, the settlement allows them to “negotiate a commitment from an e-book retailer that a retailer’s aggregate expenditure on discounts and promotions of the Settling Defendant’s e-books will not exceed the retailer’s aggregate commission under an agency agreement in which the publisher sets the e-book price and the retailer is compensated through a commission.” The settling publishers can also negotiate one-year contracts that “prevent e-book retailers from cumulatively selling that Settling Defendant’s e-books at a loss over the period of the contract.”

In other words, under that type of contract, Amazon (or any other retailer who agrees to the contract) could discount certain titles as much as it wants, or give them away for free. But it could not sell a publisher’s “entire catalogue at a sustained loss.” So if Amazon and a settling publisher sign a contract that gives Amazon a 30 percent commission on each title sold, Amazon cannot discount that publisher’s entire catalogue by more than the total amount of the commission it receives.

Bestselling author Richard Russo, Forrester’s James McQuivey and Barnes & Noble’s Jonathan Shar will be among those discussing the future of e-books at paidContent 2012, May 23 at the TimesCenter in New York, NY. Register here.

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Negative reactions have a few common themes so far:

Downloading the books is too complicated: You create a Pottermore account, buy a book, download it and then read it on your computer, load it onto your device or link to your Kindle, Nook, Sony (NYSE: SNE) or Google (NSDQ: GOOG) account and wirelessly transfer it. (Here’s the process for various e-readers.) These are “unnecessary additional barriers to access the books,” Techdirt says, and “the number of forms and clicks needed to buy a book [are] likely to put off a lot of customers.”

There are language and regional restrictions: Wired‘s Tim Carmody notes that these restrictions “make certain editions of books available only in particular countries. This means that readers in the U.S. still can’t read Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone rather than Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, discover the rich U.K. slang and spelling of the unbowdlerized editions, or listen to Stephen Fry’s masterful reading of the audiobook series rather than Jim Dale’s.”

There’s still DRM, kind of: The Pottermore e-books are watermarked (or, as Pottermore calls it, “personalized”) and each can be downloaded for personal use up to eight times, so users can read the books across gadgets (or give each of their kids a copy). However, Nate Hoffelder at the Digital Reader discovered yesterday that when you buy an e-book from Pottermore and wirelessly push it to your account at an etailer (Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN), Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS), Sony, Google) the book takes on that etailer’s DRM.

These complaints aren’t that big of a deal: Sorry, that one was mine. I don’t believe any of the above will be particularly problematic for everyday readers. The download/wireless transfer process may catch up a few but I didn’t find it difficult if you follow the instructions (no glitches) and I think a couple extra steps are worth it since you have the ability to download the book eight times and can also just load the EPUB file onto devices manually if you want. Similarly, language and regional restrictions may bother a few die-hard HP (NYSE: HPQ) fans but those are likely the same people who went out and bought all seven e-books yesterday anyway.

Possibly more problematic: Pottermore and Apple’s iBookstore haven’t come to an agreement yet because Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) uses the agency model for everything sold on iTunes. But Pottermore and Apple could still end up making a deal, and if they don’t, Apple may be a bigger loser than Pottermore. For now, users who want to read the Harry Potter e-books on an Apple device can just drag it onto their device and open it in iBooks. Or they can read it on another retailer’s app.

Overall, the Pottermore shop appears to be handling the presumably massive traffic it got yesterday just fine (though there was a possibly related glitch for under an hour at Amazon) and the site is promoting DRM-free books in a way no big-six publisher has before. For now I’m raising a glass of butterbeer to the Pottermore shop’s launch, but if you’re having issues or problems I didn’t mention here, let me know in the comments.

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The new iBooks interactive textbooks, which come from major educational publishers like McGraw-Hill and Pearson, among others, were unveiled last week at an Apple media event in New York City. The textbooks were the primary focus of the event, which also saw the introduction of iBooks Author, an e-book creation tool, and an iTunes U-dedicated iOS application. iBooks Author saw 90,000 downloads in the three days following its introduction, Global Equities Research said, but it didn’t share numbers for iTunes U.

That Apple would see 350,000 downloads of its iBooks textbooks immediately following their unveiling is not surprising, especially given that the store offers free samples, as well as one of its highlighted books free in its entirety. Curiosity, media interest and a desire to check out something new from Apple’s digital storefront would definitely all contribute to heightened interest.

The real test, however, will be whether or not Apple’s textbooks can keep up their momentum long-term. AllThingsD’s John Paczkowski points out that publishers are counting on higher volume sales at lower prices to make selling digital textbooks at $15 more profitable than selling paper versions at $75. But getting schools and parents to buy into a system in which books can’t be passed on from student to student, and which could potentially be paid for directly by parents themselves won’t be a simple matter. Not to mention that iPads are required to make the system work, which obviously represents a considerable expense in itself.

Over at ZDNet, James Kendrick has a good round-up of the arguments against Apple’s textbook initiative succeeding. He lists a lot of good points, but overall you get the sense that the biggest problem might just be a lot of hesitation from schools about adopting a model so different from what’s currently in place. Institutional inertia is not easily overcome, after all.

Three hundred fifty thousand digital textbooks downloaded in three days is definitely impressive, and could bode well for Apple’s textbooks initiative; people are obviously interested, and that’s a good thing. But the real test is yet to come. Download numbers following the kick-off of the school year next fall will definitely be a better time to make prognostications about the success or failure of Apple’s latest venture.

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