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Saylor excitement over Apple announcement, since it provides an authoring environment for open textbooks. Still ome questions about licensing of books produced via iBook Author.

"The new agreement makes it clear that Apple is only claiming sales exclusivity for the .ibooks format. If a user wants to tap iBooks Author to create a PDF version of an eBook, that PDF can be sold in any online bookstore, not just iBooks."

""There is no e-reader that supports what we found these students doing," said first author Alex Thayer, a UW doctoral student in Human Centered Design and Engineering. "It remains to be seen how to design one. Its a great space to get into, theres a lot of opportunity.""

"In 2011 the Temple University Teaching, Learning & Technology Roundtable created The Alternate Textbook Project. The goal of the Project is to encourage faculty experimentation and innovation in finding new, better and less costly ways to deliver learning materials to their students. Through the Project faculty can receive a competitive grant to develop an alternate to the traditional textbook. That could be anything from a customized set of instructional content to an existing open textbook. There is no expectation that faculty will author complete open textbooks."

"Apple's new iBooks textbook market saw lots of activity over the weekend as users downloaded 350,000 copies of books, according to Global Equities Research. If iBooks catches on in a big way, it'll certainly be profitable to Apple. But whether it will be a good deal for authors and publishers has yet to be determined."

Purdue's etextbook authoring platform, embed media, include annotations, HTML5

"Wheeler believes that Apple's announcements will be a shot in the arm for the kind of digital text programs he supports. "The economics of college textbooks are structurally flawed and are failing students, authors, professors and publishers," Wheeler told Ars. "Different approaches, including free resources and companies trying to restructure the industry-as Apple did for music-are in play.""

"Thanks to a European research council grant (2011-2014) the printed book will be associated with a very original purpose built digital platform allowing for the inquiry summed up in the book to be pursued and modified by interested readers who will act as co-inquirers and co-authors of the final results."