Apple’s textbook initiative sees 350,000 downloads in three days

TOY MAKER FOR THE WELL HEELED Apple's textbook initiative has apparently seen 350,000 ebooks downloaded in the first three days.

According to All Things D, Global Equities Research, which monitors Apple's Ibook sales through proprietary tracking revealed that more than 350,000 textbooks were downloaded from the Ibooks Store within the first three days of launch.

Meanwhile, there were 90,000 downloads of Apple's free textbook creation tool Ibooks Author.

Last week, Apple revealed that it is after a slice of the multi-billion pound textbook industry at an event in New York.

Apple said it is "reinventing the textbook" with Ibooks 2, a free app for the Ipad. The app has a section called "My Notes" that pulls everything together and, with a tap, users can make study cards. The high school textbooks themselves cost $14.99 or less.

Ibooks Author is an OS X application for making these texts. Although you can write the book within the app, Apple knows that many people use Word. Users can drag in a Word file from Finder, drop it on the chapter, and it creates sections and headers and lays out the pages automatically.

Meanwhile Itunes U is a tool for universities and colleges to deliver content around the world to anyone using an Iphone, Ipod Touch or an Ipad. The dedicated app is, of course, free - though the content isn't, and authors using Apple's software can sell their works only through Apple. µ