Founder of the Waterstone bookshop chain, Tim Waterstone will join, Jamie Byng, whose publishing house Canongate published Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father and the global success, Life Of Pi, author Matthew Kneale and journalist Rachel Cooke in the Pavilion Theatre, Dun Laoghaire to debate the future of reading, writing and books.

The session takes place on Sunday 12th September at 1.45pm as part of Dun Laoghaire Rathdown’s book festival, Mountains To Sea which is entering it’s second year in 2010.

The discussion comes at a time of great change in the world of books and the panel will explore this new digital landscape. With the launch in Ireland of Apple iPad and news that Amazon’s newest Kindle device is both the best selling Kindle ever and the best selling product on Amazon there will be much to discuss.

This morning iBooks is the number one free iPad App in Ireland.

Amazon’s Kindle for iPad app, at number eleven is just outside the top ten free Apps.

The Elements: A Visual Exploration published by Touch Press is the top ranked paid book app at number 15 in the overall list of paid apps.

Drilling down to the paid apps in the book section, The Elements: A Visual Exploration is at number one, the full version of Disney’s toy Story Read Along App at number two, Alice for the iPad at number three, Self Help Classics at number four and The Cat In The Hat by Dr. Seuss at number five.

iBooks is joined by the Kindle App, Marvel Comics App, Toy Story Read Along App and the Free Books App in the top five free book apps.

For more on reading and book apps, read Robert Maguire’s post from yesterday: To E Or Not To E: A Beginner’s Guide To iPad Ereading Apps.

Just in time for the arrival of Apple’s iPad Northern Ireland’s Jamie Guiney from Co. Armagh, has just signed with Ether Books Ltd whose App makes short stories available on the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touches worldwide.

Jamie is now in the company of an impressive list of authors whose stories are also available in the app, such as booker prize winner Hilary Mantel, Lionel Shriver, Alexander McCall Smith, Louis De Bernieres and even Sir Paul McCartney.

Sophia Bartleet MD of Ether Books said, ‘We are delighted to be publishing Jamie Guiney’s stories. They have a very strong sense of place so that when you are reading them you can almost smell and taste a different world. Ether Books is always on the lookout for the best new authors to publish on to people’s iPhones and iPads alongside their list of prize winning contemporary writers.’

This week Amazon announced that, for the first time ever on Amazon.com, ebooks had outsold hardbacks, proving that whilst some of us are reluctant to part with our beloved bound volumes, there is an ever increasing number embracing the concept of electronic reading.

And with Apple‘s much heralded iPad finally launching on these shores, we decided to take a look at some of the various apps available for reading books on your iPads, iPods and iPhones, and determine which, if any, are worth their salt.

Kindle has one of the most appealing interfaces- they’ve recognised that swiping seems to be the most intuitive way of turning a page, a feature which some developers have criminally failed to include.

As far as features go, it sticks to the basics, with the ability to bookmark pages, search text, and change the font size and colour. As a basic eReader, Kindle does the trick nicely without many frills attached.

Furthermore, the iFlow range is rather limited, covering primarily classics, and educational texts (philosophy, psychology, etc.). What the iFlow reader does have in its corner, however, is its unique interface.

Utilising the accelerometer, the app scrolls the text along the screen, with the degree of tilting determining the speed of the scrolling. For ease of reading, this this method is by far the most natural. I’ve already gotten through two novels…

Don’t like the line spacing? You can change it. Margins irritating you? No Problem. The somewhat frustrating problem of automatic page rotation is dealt with (why Apple never considered that someone would look at their iPhone while lying down is beyond me), with the ability to lock the page in landscape or portrait mode.
Social networking fans can immediately share what they’re reading through facebook or twitter via a menu of shortcuts which, of course, you can customise.

Arguably its most convenient addition is the concept of assignable hot-keys. The user can designate an action to a particular touch or movement- for example, using the classic pinch and spread motion to adjust font size.

With a wide selection enabling downloads from a variety of eBook retailers, Lexcycle seem to have covered all the bases, providing one of the best eReading apps available. (Lexcycle was acquired by Amazon in 2009)

The experience of Kobo holds up well beyond the opening screen, with a number of ways of going from page to page. This seems to be its main area of customisation, with the other options being quite basic (font size, brightness, etc.).

In offering extra page turning options it pushes itself ahead of basic reading apps, but some of these choices are impractical to the degree that they become useless (manual scrolling??). As far as selection is concerned, Kobo fares very well, and once you’ve created a Kobo account you can purchase and download titles directly through the app itself.

Comics, quite simply, are amazing to read on an iPad. The screen lends itself fabulously to the images, and the technology offers a number of interesting ways to get through the story. For example, this app offers animated transitions, where the panels are displayed one by one, offering a dynamic reading experience well suited to the subject matter.

The app also capitalises on the periodical nature of comic books, offering an update service similar to podcast management, where new issues of subscribed series are automatically downloaded and added to your library. As far as the iPad is concerned, this is one area where the full potential of the medium is explored, and to great effect.

App: ibooks | Developer: Apple | Rating: 4/5
Apple’s own reading app is cosmetically appealing, offering a bookshelf interface similar to Kobo, but endeavors to offer a customisation level similar to Stanza. Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite manage to win out in either category, but provides a solid app with several interesting features nonetheless.

Its actual reading interface is one of the most appealing available, particularly when viewed on the iPad, and provides one of the most generally pleasurable reading experiences. Among its attempts at offering functions beyond the basics, iBooks offers a dictionary, accesible through double tapping a word.

While convenient, the strength of this app lies in its style, and its selection, which offers tens of thousands of titles through Apple’s iBookstore (though the selection for Ireland is currently only Public Domain works, this should change soon).

Yesterday, blogger and business consultant Paul O’Mahony decided to document his journey towards buying an iPad. he recorded two AudioBoo podcats and has kindly allowed us to embed them here.

Don’t forget to check in with him tomorrow and see if he is successful.

# One

# Two

Apple’s iPad goes on sale in Ireland and 8 other countries on Friday 23 July.

The base 16GB wi-fi model will be priced at €499 but no further pricing has been released.

Although Irish readers will have access to the iBooks app on the iPad it is unclear if any Irish publishers will have titles available on the device.

However, publishers who have ebooks available through Kobo, Barnes & Noble or Kindle, all of whom have iPad apps will be able t sell ebooks to Irish readers.

Although there is no pre-order ability on Apple’s website the site does suggest that authorised resellers will have units for sale on the day.

The suggested retail price for the Apple iPad are below:
16GB – 32GB – 64GB
€499 – €599 – €699 >> Wi-Fi
€599 – €699 – €799 >> 3G

Apple‘s iBooks program is now available for download for the iPhone and iPod Touch, but only after users update their iPhone & iPod Touch operating systems to the new iOS4.

Irish readers do not yet have access to paid titles in Apple’s iBookstore, the iTunes for books, but they can download free Project Gutenberg ebooks to the iPod or iPhone and can also read the free Winnie The Pooh ebook that comes pre-loaded in Apple’s iBooks.

Apple announced today that they had sold 3 million units of the new iPad device since it launch 80 days ago. The iPad has not yet been released in Ireland but news on pricing is due and the device is due to go on sale early in July.

There is no word yet from Apple or Irish publishers on what titles and on what basis ebooks will be available on launch of the iPad and iBookstore.

Four of the largest publishers in the UK, Penguin, Macmillan, Hachette UK and HarperCollins had a presence on Apple’s iBookstore when the iPad launched there. They operate an Agency Model whereby the publisher sets the price and pays the seller, in this case Apple, a set commission.

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