iBooks: A Giant Failure? « PWxyz

Lots of excitement surrounded the launch of Apple’s iBook this past April–it was Apple, after all, so how could the iBookstore be anything but awesome?  Well, over at TUAW, blogger David Winograd says that after six months, he’s convinced iBooks is “a dismal failure.” He cites a bunch of reasons, including iBooks’ extremely poor selection when compared with Amazon’s sprawling catalog, and gaping holes in Apple’s offerings, including the fact that the entire Random House catalog is missing.  He also price shops for a few books and finds that iBooks is often more expensive.

He also goes on to point out that authors are selling far less in iBooks than elsewhere:

In August, Cult of Mac reported that author Joe Konrath was selling 200 books a day for the Kindle and only 100 per month on the iBookstore. This is a 60 to one difference and certainly didn’t bode well for Apple. More recent figures from applethoughts.com show that although Konrath sold over 70,000 books for the Kindle, his iBookstore sales only amounted to about 400 — and Konrath blames the iBookstore. Applethoughts agrees, noting that unlike the Kindle Store, there is no recommendation system to discover new books, and the iBookstore is difficult to navigate. In fact, the only advantage that the iBookstore does have is that purchasing is easier than Amazon’s system, since buying is tied to your iTunes account.

So, PWxyz readers, what do you think of iBooks?  Do you use it on an iPad or iPhone?  Do you find the books you’re looking for or find yourself frustrated?  Do you think it will get better soon?  Does Apple even seem to care?  We’d love to know what you think.

iBooks: A Giant Failure? « PWxyz.