Apple’s iPad Compatible with Free Project Gutenburg E-Books

While much of the discussion about books available on Apple’s soon-to-be released iPad revolves around the price publishers will get from Cupertino versus Amazon, there is another wrinkle to the story: 30,000 classics are already available for the tablet device – and they are all free. Along with iBooks sold by Apple, the iPad will also display the many out-of-copyright classics available without charge from Project Gutenberg.

In a world of DRM, where Apple’s FairPlay DRM will restrict distribution of newer books, the iPad also supports the ePub standard.This little known ability could help Apple realize its plans of getting educators onboard the iPad.

[via 9to5Mac]

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Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.

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Dr. Kenneth Noisewater
So, presumably Stanza on iPad would be redundant? Or will B&N be supporting it for their own ebook titles?
(fan of Stanza on iPhone for EZ access to gutenberg/free library books!)
Matt
Um, okay? Project Gutenberg is amazing, but pretty much every single ereader in existence is compatible with the Gutenberg text files. Even the Kindle with its proprietary-only format can use Gutenberg books (either by converting or downloading directly from manybooks.net). Plus, those books are available in html as well. Wouldn’t any internet enabled device (including iPhones) be able to read these? [Note: I don't use Stanza, but presumably the reason it's not already redundant is that it has a better interface for reading books than a web browser.]
The ePub support is much more exciting, but it’s mentioned as a bit of an afterthought in this post (also, ePub support is not shockingly innovative either, but it is a nice feature and frustratingly lacking in Kindles).
Xomisfit
Just got my first iPad and didn’t know what form of books to DL. Thx for the info. on the ePub standard. It works just fine with iBooks eReader.