Peanuts Worldwide and Graphicly announced today that the library of Peanuts children’s books and comic strips will be available as eBooks on iBooks, Kindle, Nook, Kobo Reader, Google Play Books and other eBook retailers. Over 60 titles will be available at launch with A Charlie Brown Christmas leading the pack. Other titles include Happiness is a Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown and the complete Peanuts newspaper strip archives.

“For years, publishers have waited like Linus in the pumpkin patch for an integrated, simple and cost-effective way to convert, distribute and promote digital and interactive books. We are excited to partner with Peanuts Worldwide to help make the rich history of Peanuts available to readers everywhere,” said Micah Baldwin, CEO and Founder of Graphicly.

This is actually the best time for Peanuts to go digital as more and more children are starting to own tablets. The eBooks format ensures that a whole new generation of children can enjoy stories of Charlie Brown never winning at life. If that’s too heavy, kids can enjoy the simpler tales of Snoopy being an all around badass. There’s a little something for everyone which may be why Peanuts is still so endearing after all these years.

“Two weeks ago, we sold our 100 millionth iPad,” said Cook. He stated that this level of unit sales, in just two years is “unprecedented” for a product in a new category.

Cook stated that more iPads were sold in the June quarter of 2012 than any other PC manufacturer sold of its entire lineup. Also, over 90% of web traffic comes from iPad devices. The new iPad is the fastest-selling iPad and top-selling tablet of all time.

The Apple CEO then stated why the company believes its iPad devices are so successful: “People love their iPads.” No kidding. Luckily, Cook expounded upon that statement, saying the iPad’s display, responsiveness, front and rear cameras, connectivity, and “legendary all-day battery life” are factors in that love.

Cook went on to point out that the iPad has been embraced in both the education and business realms. He stated that textbooks on the iPad are now available for 80% of u.s. high school core curriculum. Also, iPads are now available in 2500 schools across the U.S., though in what capacity they were available wasn’t adressed. With respect to business, Cook stated that 94% of fortune 500 companies are now “testing or deploying an iPad.”

Cook then announced that iBooks Author has gotten an update. The new iBooks Author will enable embedded fonts, as well as mathematical expressions that can be inserted directly into books. Multi-touch widgets are also now available, and Cook stated that “publishers can now easily update their books.” It was stated that Apple is trying to re-invent the textbook with multimedia and interactive options.

The new iBooks Author will be available today, for free, in the Mac App Store.

Apple CEO Tim Cook took the stage this morning and updated the tech press on all of the newest, impressive Apple and App Store statistics. That led into the announcement of a new version of iBooks

According to Cook, the new iBooks features continuous scrolling and improved integration with iOS 6.

“It’s also better integrated with iCloud,” said Cook. He pointed out that iOS users can leave off reading on one device and pick up reading on another with better accuracy.

Unsurprisingly, iBooks now has the capability to share users’ reading experiences through Facebook and Twitter

The new iBooks also now supportins over 40 languages, including Korean, Chinese, and Japanese. The page turning for these languages will turn in the direction expected in those cultures.

The updated iBooks app will be available today, and customers can download it through the iTunes App Store.

The iBook is only available in English, but Verizon states that the iBook format is more easily digestible than the PDF. Charts and graphs in the report have been placed closer to their reference text and they can now be interacted with for a zoom-view. Users can also now search through the text more easily to find specific topics.

“Earlier this month, we announced that the full ’2012 Data Breach Investigations Report’ is available for the first time in six additional languages, and now we are delivering an iBook version to meet the overwhelming interest in the report from the business and security communities,” said Wade Baker, director of risk intelligence for Verizon. “Today users have multiple ways of getting to our data and using it to make better informed security decisions as well as to bolster their security defenses.”

This year’s report is Verizon’s fifth annual Data Breach Investigations Report. It includes analysis by the Verizon Research Investigations Solutions Knowledge (RISK) team of 855 data breaches and over 174 million compromised records. The report can be downloaded now in the Apple App Store or through iTunes.

Before the iPad launched in 2010, Amazon effectively owned the e-book market with its Kindle e-reader. Operating on a wholesale model for pricing, Amazon paid a wholesale price for e-books, then set its own prices for them. Much to the publishers’ frustration, Amazon used books in a way no retailer had done before: as a loss leader. It sold the e-books below wholesale in order to drive sales of the Kindle. Publishers feared that this would create unreasonable expectations among customers, and that it would drive down the cost of hard copy books – especially hardcovers, which are the publishers’ biggest money makers.

While Barnes & Noble tried to elbow its way into the e-book market with its Nook e-reader (which was arguably superior to the Kindle in terms of hardware), it met with little real success, never getting closer than a distant second to the Kindle. When Apple launched the iPad and its iBooks e-reader software, though, it also announced new deals with the five publishers named in the Justice Department’s lawsuit. Under the agency model, it’s the publishers who set the prices of e-books, and the retailer – in this case Apple – gets a 30% cut off the top for every book sold. Once the iPad took off in popularity – to the point that it harmed sales of e-readers like the Kindle and Nook – the publishers were able to force Amazon and Barnes & Noble to enter into the same sort of agency model agreements they had with Apple.

All of this raised major concerns with the Justice Department (and the European Commission), which thought the switch to the agency model smacked of anti-competitive collusion. They finally filed an antitrust suit against all six companies earlier this month. While three of the companies – Hachette, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster – reached quick settlements to avoid a costly legal battle, the other three did not. Macmillan, Penguin, and Apple all issued statements insisting they had done nothing wrong. What’s more, they claimed that although the agency model did result in higher e-book prices, it actually fostered competition by breaking Amazon’s stranglehold on the e-book market.

What’s interesting is that they appear to be right. There are a couple of important points to consider. First and foremost, the agency model is certainly not the result of collusion. It wasn’t invented by Apple or the publishers just for e-book pricing. It has existed in other industries for quite some time. What’s more, it’s been in use by Apple for several years: the iOS App Store operates on the exact same pricing model. Developers set the price of their apps, and Apple gets 30% off the top. If a developer sells their app for $0.99, Apple gets 30% ($0.297). If a developer sells their app for $4.99, Apple gets 30% ($1.50). If a developer offers their app for free, Apple gets 30% ($0).

That in and of itself creates a major problem for the Justice Department’s case. Even if the government can prove that the publishers colluded, it will be nearly impossible to prove that Apple did so. All Apple did was offer e-book publishers the same pricing model that it offers app developers. The publishers, in turn, saw a model that offered them a chance to get out from under Amazon’s thumb, and they took it.

Competition is another place where the government will have trouble making its case. As previously noted, Amazon’s pre-iPad grip on the e-book market was strong. While other e-readers and e-book retailers existed, none was able to offer a serious challenge to Amazon and the Kindle. The best challenge was Barnes & Noble, who was never able to do better than a distant second. Since the switch to the agency model, though, the Kindle’s market share has dropped, making room for an increased Barnes & Noble presence, and for the iPad, which is the Kindle’s greatest challenger. The problem that the government faces, then, is that it has to argue that a pricing model that demonstrably increased competition is somehow anti-competitive.

In the meantime, though, things are already starting to change. As Gordon Crovitz of the Wall Street Journal points out, Barnes & Noble is already starting to suffer in the wake of the lawsuit. Though the terms of the government’s settlements with three of the five publishers are not known, it’s almost certain that they include a return to the wholesale model, which will allow Amazon to return to using e-books as a loss leader.

The publishing industry is not without its flaws. Indeed, in many ways the rise of e-books has been handled horribly by an industry that is as married to a moribund business model as its counterparts in Hollywood. Nevertheless, it’s looking more and more like the publishers might actually be in the right on this one, and that if e-book readers want a genuinely healthy e-book market, they might have to be willing to pay slightly higher prices for their books.

What do you think? Is the agency model anti-competitive? Do low prices trump a genuinely competitive market? Does the wholesale model risk turning Amazon into the Walmart of the e-book world? Let us know in the comments.

While Hachette, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster have reportedly agreed to settle out of court, Apple, MacMillan, and Penguin apparently mean to contest the suit. A little while ago, Macmillan CEO John Sargent made a post to Macmillan’s news page explaining his company’s refusal to settle the lawsuit.

He begins with the assertion that Macmillan is innocent of any wrongdoing in its adoption of the agency model: “Macmillan did not act illegally. Macmillan did not collude.” In fact, he said, the decision to adopt the agency model was not made in concert with other publishing CEOs, but rather Sargent himself came to the decision “on January 22nd, 2010 a little after 4:00 AM, on an exercise bike in my basement.” He also called it “the loneliest decision I have ever made.”

Sargent also argues that the choice to adopt the agency model was not motivated by a desire for increased profits, but by a desire to preserve competition. The agency model, he says, means that Macmillan makes less money on e-book sales, but that the change was made “to support an open and competitive market for the future.”

He also called the settlement terms the DOJ was demanding “too onerous.” Though Macmillan would have preferred to settle out of court and avoid the costs “in time, distraction, and expense.” These terms, though, “could have allowed Amazon to recover the monopoly position it had been building before our switch to the agency model.”

Sargent noted that Hachette, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster had decided to settle, and said that it was “their decision to make.” Macmillan, however, would continue to fight in court because “[i]t is hard to settle a lawsuit when you know you have done no wrong.”

Sargent’s statement closes with a quote from Author’s Guild president Scott Turow, who had the following to say:

The irony of this bites hard: our government may be on the verge of killing real competition in order to save the appearance of competition. This would be tragic for all of us who value books and the culture they support.

What do you think? Is the agency model actually better for competition, or should it be abandoned, at the risk of Amazon gaining a monopoly? Let us know in the comments.

ORIGINAL STORY:

Earlier this morning we brought you news that the U.S. Department of Justice might file suit against Apple and several book publishers for e-book price fixing. Now it looks like that suit has actually been filed.

According to a report from Bloomberg, the DOJ has filed suit against Apple and all five of the publishers listed in the original investigation: Simon & Schuster, Hachette, Penguin, MacMillan, and HarperCollins. The suit alleges that the agreements between Apple and the publishers made prior to the launch of the original iPad and iBooks in 2010 constitute price-fixing, in violation of U.S. antitrust laws.

According to the report, three of the five publishers – Hachette, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster – are seeking to settle the case out of court, while Apple, Penguin, and MacMillan are all preparing to fight the lawsuit. Requests for comment sent to Apple and the five publishers have not yet been answered. Citing “two people familiar with the matter,” Bloomberg says that the settlements could come later today.

The government is seeking to nullify the agreements between Apple and the five publishers that instituted an agency model of e-book sales. Under the agency model, publishers set the price of e-books, and the retailer gets 30% of the price. Under the previous wholesale model, e-books were sold in the same way as physical books: the books are sold to the retailer by the publisher, and the retailer is allowed to set whatever price they choose. This model caused concern for publishers because Amazon was selling e-books at or below wholesale in order to drive sales of their Kindle e-reader, a practice which Barnes & Noble also adopted when they released their own Nook e-reader. The government alleges that by adopting the agency model, Apple and the publishers colluded to raise e-book prices. Once the agency model agreements with Apple were in place, the publishers were able to strong-arm Amazon and Barnes & Noble into similar agreements.

Citing “two people familiar with the matter,” Reuters reported last night that while some of the publishers have been engaged in settlement negotiations with the government, Apple has not. Early last month the Justice Department issued warnings to Apple and five major publishing houses – Simon & Schuster, Hachette, Penguin, MacMillan, and Harper Collins – that it was investigating them for violations of anti-trust regulations.

When the iPad launched in 2010, Apple announced agreements with several major publishers that completely changed the landscape of e-book sales. Previously, e-books had been sold using the same wholesale model under which physical books are sold: the publisher sells the books to the retailer (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.), and the retailer then sets the price for the books. With the introduction of Amazon’s Kindle reader and the growing popularity of e-books, however, the publishers began to be unhappy with this model. In order to sell units of the Kindle, Amazon was selling many e-books at or below wholesale. Publishers worried that this practice would negatively impact the sales of hard copy e-books – particularly hardcover editions.

Prior to the launch of the iPad, Apple negotiated with the publishers to sell e-books through the iBooks store under an agency model. This model mirrors the pricing model in Apple’s App Store: the e-book prices are set by the publisher, and Apple receives 30% of all sales. While these agreements were extremely unpopular with both consumers and retailers (other than Apple), the publishers were extremely pleased. With Apple – and the immense popularity of the newly released iPad – behind them, the publishers were able to strong-arm Amazon and Barnes and Noble into similar agreements.

These agreements, however, caught the attention of both the U.S. Justice Department and the European Commission. Both organizations worried that the agreements between Apple and the publishers amounted to price fixing and violated antitrust laws. While there has been no word on the progress of the European investigation in some time, it seems that the Justice Department has concluded that antitrust laws were violated.

While the terms of the settlements with the publishers are not known, it is highly likely that they will be required to scrap the agency model and return to the wholesale model for e-books. What that will mean for the publishers’ bottom line is not entirely clear, however it could mean a significant boost in revenue for Amazon and Barnes and Noble, as well as a drop in e-book prices. The DOJ’s lawsuit against Apple will likely pursue a similar outcome. There has also been some speculation that the practice of windowing – releasing an e-book weeks or even months after the hardcover edition comes out – may be a target of the DOJ investigation as well.

What do you think? Does the agency model constitute price fixing? What about e-book windowing? Is the wholesale model fair to publishers? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Recently Apple released their second incarnation of the iBook, but textbook are still out ranking iPads and iBooks as an excepted form of learning text by a very large margin. Of course change doesn’t happen overnight and there is certainly a lot more e-book readers available when compared with just a few years ago.

The subject of this next infographic from WorldWideLearn.Com is the popularity of iBooks and a cost comparison between the device and traditional texts. It’s interesting what they found, and like I said, the numbers are changing everyday.

Pearson announced today that it will be showcasing its new iBooks and digital education initiative at SXSWedu. The iBooks presentation will go down on Tuesday while Wednesday will showcase their plans for the digital classroom of the future.

Pearson has been at the forefront of interactive textbooks by designing learning experiences based around video, 3D animation and other interactive images. To continue this trend, Pearson CEO Marjorie Scardino will be using her keynote at SXSWedu to showcase their new iBook line that allows students to digitally highlight, take notes, bookmark, quickly look up definitions, link to relevant topics and more.

“Educators across the country are making a major push to transform the classroom experience by integrating digital programs that will help better prepare students for college and careers,” said Mike Evans, Pearson Senior Vice President. “The classrooms of tomorrow are digital, and iBooks are among the interactive programs that will help teachers reach the Facebook generation of students in a way never before possible.”

While the push for iBooks is commendable, the cost of the iPad and other materials will still have to be considered. We reported on a study that found traditional textbooks to be the cheaper way to go for high schools at this point in time. Apple is the main factor when it comes to cost, but Pearson could introduce a way to lower costs somewhat so smarter education could be more affordable to all, especially in those areas that need it the most.

We’ll be covering more SXSW 2012 events and announcements as they happen, so stay tuned to our coverage.