Curling Up with a Good iBook - iPad Mini - page 267

enter the store, tap the Store button in the upper-left corner of your virtual bookshelf or your library
List view.
Publishers and their prices
The iBooks Store operates in 155 countries as of this writing, with more than 1.8 million available
books. By October 2012, more than 400 million books had been downloaded. Not all books are avail-
able in all markets, of course. Some works — Jay-Z's memoir Decoded, to take a single example —
are enhanced with video. Meanwhile, the store includes titles from all six major trade publishers:
Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Group, Simon & Schuster, and Random
House, as well as several independents. John Wiley & Sons is also represented, of course. Random
House had been the only holdout among big-name publishers when Apple first launched the store, but
the largest trade-book publisher in the United States eventually came aboard.
Publishers, not Apple, set the prices. Many bestsellers in the joint cost $12.99, though some fetch
$9.99 or less. Dear Life from Nobel Prize winner Alice Munro fetches $7.99. In fact, Apple runs spe-
cials from time to time. Leading up to Halloween, the store sold some picture books targeted at the
trick-or-treating crowd for $3.99 or less. On the other hand, Anne Hillerman's Spider Woman's
Daughter goes for $15.99. Free selections are also available.
Just browsing iBooks Store
You have several ways to browse for books in the iBooks Store. The top portion of the screen shows
ever-changing ads for books that fit a chosen category (Children & Teens in the example shown in
Figure 10-6 ) . But you can also browse Release Date in the particular category you have in mind.
You can scroll to the left or right for more releases to peek at. Or tap See All for many more selec-
tions.
Look at the bottom of the screen. You see the following icons:
Featured: This is where you've been hanging out so far in this chapter. Featured works are
the topics being promoted in the store. These may include popular titles or an author spotlight
from the likes of Twilight writer Stephenie Meyer. Swipe the featured books at the top of the
screen for more choices. Do the same, if you wish, for the Fiction and Nonfiction sections.
Or tap See All for more selections. Scroll all the way to bottom of the screen for Quick Links
(Best of the Month, Award Winners, Sneak Peeks, and more). In this area, you can also check
out your iTunes account information, tap a button that transports you to iTunes customer ser-
vice, and redeem any iTunes gift cards or gift certificates. You can even tap a button to sell
your books on iBooks.
NYTimes: Short for The New York Times, of course. These books make the newspaper's fam-
ous bestsellers lists, which are divided into fiction and nonfiction works. The top books in
each list are initially shown. Scroll down to see more titles.