My first thought when I saw the Apple iPad and its iBooks app was, 'how do I get on it?'. That question has now been answered: Apple has opened up the iBookstore to everyone. But to take advantage of the opportunity, you need to be prepared.

First, sign up with Apple iTunes Connect. I get the impression that the sign-up process has been designed deliberately to put off casual wannabes. It's fairly detailed and demanding. For example, if you're not a US resident, you'll need an IRS ITIN - I explain here how we got ours.

Next, you'll need your book in ePub format. And you have to make sure it passes epubcheck with flying colours. I covered a lot of this in my three-part post about fixing InDesign CS3's ePub issues.

Apple wants a separate cover image, not one embedded in the ePub file, so have a hi-res version ready.

Your book also needs an ISBN. For Make Do & Cook and Lady Caine, we decided to create iBookstore editions with their own ISBNs.

You'll be asked to enter various metadata, including a book description. You'll also be asked about the print version of the book (price, number of pages). If you don't have a print version, you need to guess at what it would be like. Strange.

The iTunes Connect website provides forms for uploading the files. But Mac users have a better option. You can download the iTunes Producer software which holds your hand as you go through the various stages of providing information for your book (metadata, pricing, territories, etc) and ensures that all the ducks are in a row before you upload. I highly recommend using this as it helps you understand what information you'll need to have at hand.

Once uploaded, the book needs to be approved. This took about 48 hours for our titles. We then sold our first e-book within a few hours, before we'd even had time to announce that the iPad editions were available.

Following MacMillan's victory over Amazon, two more publishers are joining the fray. They are unhappy with Amazon's $9.99 price model for e-books and want to be able to fix higher prices.

HarperCollins copied MacMillan's move in switching to a business model in which Amazon becomes an 'agent'. That allows the publisher to fix the price of the e-book - typically $14.99 - with Amazon taking a simple cut of each sale, probably 30%.

According to HarperCollins' owner, Rupert Murdoch: “We don’t like the Amazon model of $9.99 ... We think it really devalues books and hurts all the retailers of hardcover books."

Hachette is the third big publisher to go down this route. It has sent out a memo to authors' agents that said that it is, “not looking to the agency model as a way to make more money on e-books. In fact, we make less on each e-book sale under the new model; the author will continue to be fairly compensated and our e-book agents will make money on every digital sale."

What do you notice about these three publishers? That's right: they are among the five companies who featured prominantly in the launch of the Apple iPad. Hardly a coincidence.

Three problems

This is worrying for Amazon on three counts. First, it further weakens the strangehold the online retailer has had on the book market. Second, it forces up the price of e-books, and Amazon's success has been largely based on discounting. And third, any impact these higher prices have on sales may also affect sales of the Kindle.

Unlike Amazon, the publishers aren't in the hardware business. They're free to sell their books on every platform and don't have to worry about which will become the most successful.

Amazon has invested a great deal in the close integration of its reading platform and book sales. For the Kindle, it chose a non-standard format. It's based on the Mobipocket .mobi format, but with proprietary Digital Rights Management (DRM). Kindle books can be read only on the Kindle. And with very poor support for other formats (include patchy PDF capabilities), the Kindle is really only good for reading Kindle books. Not only might poor sales of Kindle-format books hurt sales of the reader, the reverse is also true. Lock-in works fine when you're the only game in town and people can't get the books they want elsewhere.

Virtually all other current models of e-book reader, including the iPad, read the open (and fast becoming the de facto standard) ePub format. That gives customers much greater flexibility in choosing hardware and sources for their books. (How well the iPad works with books not sourced from the iBookstore is something of a question mark, though.)

In all areas of IT, we're seeing a move towards open standards and platforms. Whether Amazon's adoption of a more old-fashioned, single-source proprietary model continues to work is a moot point, but it'll be interesting to watch. Meanwhile, those of us who self-publish are free to publish our books on any and all platforms. So why should we worry?

Tablet fever isn't going away, even though Apple has finally launched its iPad and the rumour-mongering can end. Indeed, there are new rumours of further Apple devices, in varying sizes (including larger) and with capabilities more like a laptop. And Google has shown off proof-of-concept images and video of its own device - or, at least, of the Chrome OS running on a tablet.

The latter is, perhaps, more intriguing. It's hardly a surprise that Apple is planning to launch more tablet models. For a start, it needs to address some of the shortcomings in the current iPad, such as lack of multitasking. And the response to the 'overgrown iPhone' clearly shows that there is a market desire (if not a demand) for a more capable, laptop-like device running a fuller version of OS X, rather than the iPhone OS (even if version 4 with multitasking might be ready soon).

Google's possible entry into this market might be a tad more significant, especially for those of us interested in e-books. The images, shown on the Chromium blog (Chromium being the project name for the Google Chrome OS and browser), simply show what the company's forthcoming OS might look like on a tablet. It's not a preview of an actual device. But it might be read as an expression of intent. 

In Google's Chrome OS, the browser is the OS. Everything happens in the browser. Google is already making use of the features of HTML5 (which won't be finalised for some years) to create hybrid applications that blur the distinction between programs that run on your computer and those on the web. The online element is a key part of the experience and the functionality of the platform.

This is interesting in the light of the iPad. Tablet computers have been with us for years. But the majority took some flavour of Microsoft Windows and tried to squeeze this PC environment into a device clearly not suited to it. With the iPad, Appple has come from the opposite direction. Instead of attempting to put a PC on a tablet and then saying "see what you can do with this", it has asked "what do people want to do with a tablet?" and has provided those capabilities in a pleasurable and simple package.

No doubt, future iterations of the iPad will involve some degree of mission creep. But it's perfectly obvious that Apple is focusing on the experience that it believes people want.

An important part of that experience is reading books. And the iBooks app does for reading what iTunes did for music: it provides a single, integrated environment for browsing, sampling, buying, managing and using. And it does this by seamlessly integrating both the online and offline elements.

Enter Google. Its Chrome OS environment is ideal for creating these kinds of hybrid applications. Indeed, that's the entire basis of the operating system. One can easily imagine an application that provides both an e-book reader and a web browsing capability. And then you can add to this mix Google Books and the company's ongoing settlement with book rights holders. Now you have both the technology and the products for a major e-book platform.

Watch this space.

Many people in the book trade are wont to make the sign of the cross whenever Amazon's name is mentioned. The online bookseller is credited with forcing publishers to slash their prices - and their profit margins.

But a recent spat between Amazon.com and publisher Macmillan might be an indication of a change in the balance of power.

Macmillan announced that it was changing the way it worked with Amazon when it comes to e-books. Amazon, it said, would become a sales 'agent'. The effect would be to allow Macmillan to better dictate prices. Amazon responded by removing the 'buy' button from all of Macmillan's products available on Amazon.com.

It was a nasty moment. Unusually, however, it's Amazon that has given way.

According to some in the publishing world, Amazon's position as the world's leading online book retailer has made it somewhat arrogant. To boost its own profits, it forces publishers to offer major discounts. Of course, Amazon isn't the only retail player flexing its muscle in this way. Supermarkets have been doing the same, and as publishers can't get high up the bestseller list without supermarket sales, they have had to go along.

It seems that Amazon has been doing the same with e-books, and that proved the last straw for Macmillan. Amazon wants e-books priced at $9.99, even for new, bestselling titles. Such prices not only encourage more book sales, they also boost sales of the Kindle. Publishers would be happier with something like $14.99. The fight was on.

Amazon's surrender to Macmillan surprised a lot of people, even if it was accompanied by a somewhat snippy remark to the effect that Macmillan has a "monopoly" on its own books. (Well, duh.)

But is it any coincidence that this has all come to pass just after the launch of Apple's iPad? I think not.

Macmillan is one of the five major publishers who had signed up for the iBookstore by the time of the recent iPad launch. Now the company has another major online retail outlet and (what is bound to become) another popular e-book reader platform.

There are plenty of e-book readers out there. But Amazon, with the Kindle, had done the best job of providing an integrated browsing, buying and reading platform. Now Apple has a better one. So it's not just the Kindle that is threatened by the iPad - it's Amazon's grip on the book market.

Well, it's here. After months of hysteria and hype (not unconnected) Apple has launched its overgrown iPhone, the iPad tablet computer. And it's going to be a game-changer. But that's not because it's a revolutionary piece of hardware: in fact, in many ways it's only a step-change, and while it's undoubtedly sexy, as you'd expect from Apple, some may find it a little limited in functionality compared to, say, a laptop computer. No, the real significance is the way it changes the way we consume, the way we interact with media including the web and, more importantly, books.

For self-publishers, it is likely to herald a very important shift in the publishing ecosphere. As expected, the iPad comes with an e-book reader application, iBooks. Also, as expected, Apple is backing this with an online store. Five publishers were signed up to this by the time of the launch - Penguin, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan and Hachett. (Random House held back, as it did with the Kindle.)

What matters to the self-publisher, of course, is the ability of individuals to get on the virtual bookshelves alongside the big players. Amazon already makes that possible for the Kindle through its Digital Text Platform (DTP). Making your book available for the Kindle is as easy as uploading a Word file. If Apple does the same with iBooks, this will be great news for self-publishers. Why?

Well, self-publishers have difficulty competing with mainstream publishers on three counts:

• Price. Print On Demand (POD) books are inevitably more expensive than conventionally printed copies because the POD service makes sure it gets a healthy profit long before you add your mark-up.
• Distribution. Getting into bookshops and other retail sites is hard work for the self-publisher. Few achieve it to any great extent.
• Promotion and marketing. Few self-publishers have the money and resources for this.

E-books remove the first obstacle. With no manufacturing costs, e-books allow self-publishers to sell at the same price as mainstream publishers - or even cheaper, given their lack of overheads.

Distribution through the Kindle store or the iBooks store is automatic. No difference there between the bigger and smaller players.

That leaves mainstream publishers with just the one advantage - marketing. And let's face it, few of them are doing much of that for anyone but their A-list authors.

A suitable platform 

There will be debates over the iPad's suitability as an e-book platform. Having a regular LCD screen, it's not as readable in sunlight as an e-ink display. It's somewhat harder on the eyes, too. But then the colour display offers greater potential. When books start to carry rich content, such as video, that will be important. Colour e-ink displays are on their way, but it may be a while before they can offer the vibrancy of the iPad's screen. Besides which, e-ink's emulation of paper probably matters more to older generations. Young people don't have the same relationship with paper we oldies have. Their relationship is with screens. Simulating paper may not be a high priority for them.

And you can't get away from the fact that the iPad gives you a lot more than just an e-reader. For the price differential between it and the Kindle, you get a device that does so much more. Over the past few years, convergence has been the key tecnological trend. People don't want lots of individual devices, each doing a single, separate job. Consumers are accustomed to cellphones that also take photos, shoot video and allow you to email, tweet and browse the web. With the iPhone, Apple proved the popularity of additional applications - the iPhone App Store has around 140,000 now (all of which run on the iPad). People want their technology to do more. They might be willing to trade a little readability for that functionality.

Perhaps the iPad could have had more - a camera, for example. But it has enough extra functionality to put a clear distance between it and dedicated e-book readers.

One-click shopping

So how is Apple with its iPad going to beat Amazon with its Kindle? The answer lies in the integration of the whole process of buying and reading. Amazon has done a pretty good job of making it easy to get books on to your Kindle. But Apple has made it even faster and easier.

They've done this sort of thing before. The revolution in music was not the MP3 format. That just changed the nature of piracy, from home-taping to filesharing. The real revolution was the iPod. And again, it wasn't the hardware that changed the music world forever, it was the iTunes Music Store and the fact that access to it is built right into the iTunes software. The software you use to manage and listen to your music is the same software you use to browse the shop and buy. It's seamlessly integrated, a single process of consumption.

And so it is with iBooks.The software presents you with a bookshelf. Tap on a book and start reading. Want something else? One more tap and the bookshelf flips over to reveal a bookshop, right there in your hand. Within a minute or two (depending on connection speed) you can be reading a new book - all using the same application on the same device.

If Apple manages to do for books what it did for music, there will be one other benefit for self-publishers (indeed, all publishers).

The music business moans constantly about piracy. And we all know it's rife. And yet, the iTunes/iPod experience proved that people are still willing to pay for music at a reasonable price. In spite of the filesharing and illegal copying, enough people are happy to pay a euro for a track, especially given the convenience that Apple provides.

Publishers are rightly worried that the move to e-books will result in the same kind of piracy the music business has suffered. But, using Apple's model, we may find that there is still a viable business model in the midst of this.

And here's where self-publishers might gain an advantage. Publishers, like music companies, have high overheads. That's why authors only get around 10% of the cover price in royalties. The rest not only goes on marketing and manufacturing, but staff, offices, lunches and the rest.

Self-publishing is a lean operation, capable of operating on much lower margins. That means self-publishers can drop prices and ride out the effects of piracy much more easily than the large publishers.

Standard format

Interestingly, Apple has adopted the ePub format for the iBooks platform. That's fast becoming the de facto standard. Most e-book readers support it. Sony had its own proprietary format, but has since switched to ePub. Which well-known reader doesn't support ePub? That's right. The Kindle. (It also has poor PDF support.)

Suddenly, Amazon looks a tad isolated, with a proprietary e-book format and a reader that looks positively last-century alongside the iPad. Amazon's belated attempt to launch apps for the Kindle seems desperate, and still leaves the Kindle pretty much a one-trick pony.