Apple Stocks iPad Book Store with 30,000 Free Books, Bestsellers for $10

March 26, 2010 By Nick Mokey

Apple will directly match Amazon's pricing on many bestsellers in iBooks, and sweeten the pot by directly importing 30,000 free books from Project Gutenberg.

After the Wall Street Journal blew the lid of off book and magazine pricing on the iPad earlier this week, another leak recently offered a sneak peak and book pricing. As on Amazon’s Kindle, bestsellers will go for $9.99 a pop, and 30,000 classic titles will be available through the store for free.

AppAdvice revealed the bestseller pricing after a “not-so-NDA-complying preview” of iBooks, indicating that 27 of 32 New York Times Bestsellers were priced at $9.99, including list toppers Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang, The Help, The Silent Sea, Missing, and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. The highest price book, a Macmillan title, goes for $12.99.

In a separate post, AppAdvice also revealed that Apple has imported the entire Project Gutenberg library over 30,000 out-of-copyright books into the iTunes. Although the iPad’s ability to import ePub titles would have made it possible for iPad owners to read them either way, their availability through the store should make it easier for owners to access them.

Apple’s $9.99 bestseller pricing puts the iTunes book store directly at odds with Amazon’s e-book store, and the iPad at odds with Amazon’s Kindle. While the Kindle can also read the ePub format from Project Gutenberg, users have to go through a more convoluted download process to get books to the device, rather than simply grabbing it through the Amazon store.

Showing 7 comments

Chloe Napier at 7:44am 27th December 2010 I thought This websiste would let you download free iBooks for your iPad but no. Now I can't get any free IBooks. :(
Survey: 4 pct of households own an iPad, a third are app-less at 7:32am 22nd October 2010 [...] are largely predictable, but there are a few items of note.iPad owners consume significantly more e-books, TV shows, movies, and magazines than iPhone users, but a bit less radio, news, and music. This is [...]
@DagnyAbbott at 10:43am 11th October 2010 I sat there and downloaded a bunch of free ebooks to my ipad one day. The next day when I went to see if maybe I wanted to read one, they all disappeared on me. I don't get it.
Andrys at 1:03am 22nd April 2010 Say, the Kindle link you gave for a 'more convoluted way' to get the Gutenberg books to the Kindle is actually a link for the easiest way possible except that the first step is just to get the 'Magic Catalog' of Gutenberg books TO your Kindle.

After that one download, you open that catalog on the Kindle as you would any book, Browse or Search it at your leisure. If you decide to get one of the books from the catalog of 30,000 books, you merely click on the link describing the books and the Kindle gets it for you and it winds up on your Kindle immediately.

At no charge even for that direct wireless download from wherever you are, since the Kindle has free cellular wireless. However, this direct download works only in places where there IS cellular wireless OR WiFi.

The 3G cellular wireless is available for the Kindle in the U.S., Mexico, Japan, and Hong Kong.
jasonmatthews at 1:22pm 1st April 2010 Smashwords authors also have eligibility to get on this if their ebooks comply.
Fix Ps3 at 4:03am 1st April 2010 seem it's a great deal,30,000 for $10.
1. @MarkSawatzky at 3:54pm 11th December 2010 Clearly you did not read the article...