Apple's iBookstore Plans

In an article today, The New York Times reports on the ongoing e-book pricing battle between Amazon and Apple. Down at the bottom is a reference to a job posting at iBookstore that can be found here.

As is often the case, there's often more information about corporate strategies in their job postings than in media releases.

Responsible for building and growing relationships with small and medium-size book publishers, self-published authors, and other content providers for the iBookstore. ... Identify and build relationships with independent content providers, helping them get their content onto the iBookstore. Help grow the store's catalog, identifying and sourcing content in a variety of niche categories. 

For iPad early adopters and on-the-fence-maybe-adopters (not to mention emphatically for authors and publishers), this is good news. Although I write mostly technical books and work generally with major publishers (and enjoy the writing and the work with the publishers), I have many friends in the small-press world and in what I consider to be the most threatened category of publishing in the US--what is referred to often as literary fiction. Now we have confirmation that both Amazon/Kindle and Apple/iPad are moving beyond the best sellers to the varied and exciting world of independent publishing, self-publishing, and new outlets for our fiction authors.

Great news!