Why Mark Coker’s wrong about the iBooks Store
Mark wrote another strong article calling iOS8 a game-changer because iBooks will now be installed as part of the basic operating system. I doubt it—for a very simple reason.
The iBooks Store is a lousy interface
Let me just give you one example. My preferred genre is Christian epic fantasy. It’s not listed in iBooks genre so I try to search for books tagged like this. I get a list of heathen authors whose name is Christian [like Hans Christian Anderson] or actually any author named Chris.
If I search for an author I like, say Guy Stanton III, I get a list of all his books but no link or listing for anything similar.
Bottom line: I cannot locate Christian epic fantasy in the iBooks Store
Unless I know the name of a specific author, or a specific title, I can find nothing in the genre I read. Now there are dozens of books in this genre released over the past few years. Most of them are listed and for sale in iBooks, BUT I have to know about them to buy one.
The iBooks Store has no discovery mechanism
As a result, I have to use Amazon for my discovery tool, or CBD [Christian Book Distributors]. Then I have to go to iBooks to buy it [because iBooks is the best ereader]. I do that because I’m a book designer working on a Mac. Most people are not. So, it’s impressive that iBooks is second worldwide in sales. It shows how much better its interface is. But it’s no competition to Amazon until their discovery abilities expand greatly.
