I’m a developer. I deal with the Books section of the App Store more than any other part of iTunes mobile downloading juggernaut because of the comics that I have in the store.
One thing that is really depressing about the Books section of the App Store is the insane number of public domain books that are available.
Now I’m not talking about “Classics”, a very nice App that presents classic public domain works in an elegant and easy to read style with some impressive graphics work.
I’m talking about the companies that are cobbling together horrible little eBook reader Apps then stuffing public domain work into them and charging $0.99 a piece.
Right now there are no less than 10 “The Art of War” Apps in the App Store, most of which appear to be copied from the same online texts.
What the App Store needs more of is NEW, ORIGINAL material from upcoming authors. I don’t really understand why we see so very little of that. The vast majority of the book entries into the store right now are simply public domain works being repurposed for no good reason.
I’d really like to see someone focus on new authors with the iPhone as a launching platform…I think it could be a huge starting point for aspiring writers, but for it to do so, I really think we have to somehow keep the “classics” to a minimum.
Is that just me?
2 thoughts on “What the iPhone Needs Less of are Public Domain Books”
I’d love to offer my first novel for something like this but I don’t have the Dev skills.
I don’t mind all the extra “apps” (although I do prefer a reusable app that can provide multiple books), but I hate how poor the searching/shopping experience is. Book apps are a lot more like albums and movies in that they’ve got authors, titles, publishers, genres, topics, and/or themes each of which should be searchable / browsable / sortable / etc.
I think Apple should address *that*. Which would mitigate all the copies of the public domain “apps”.
reinharden