iBookstore Gets Organized Before iPad’s Unveiling

The multi-announced Apple iPad is on its way and the last-minute preparations are blazing. Apple is organizing its book-selling categories and its process of certifying iPhone applications to work on the new, larger device, as mobile media research firm Busted Loop relates. The iBookstore will be divided into more than 150 subcategories in order to improve consumer browsing.

The e-books will be organized similar to how iPhone and iPad touch applications are organized in the App Store and the items will be split into 20 or 30 top-level groupings. The groupings will include Fiction & Literature, Reference, History, Cookbooks and Comics & Graphic Novels.

Many of the eBook sub-categories are very specific, including some very specific genres, such as "Manga" under "Comics & Graphic Novels," "Special Ingredients" under "Cookbooks," and "Etiquette" under "Reference," according to Forbes. Some sub-categories, such as "Fantasy" and "Science Fiction & Literature," even have sub-sub-categories ("Historical" and "Paranormal," for example). There are also two separate sections for "Erotica," one in "Fiction & Literature" and another one in "Romance." It's unclear whether these sections will offer different types of Erotica, or will just be separate paths to browse the same material, the AppSlice comments.

Busted Loop relates that the "Sports & Outdoors" grouping alone contains classifications for 15 different sports, whereas the "Computing" category is segmented among nine different sub-categories (including "Digital Media," "Network," and "Programming"). Apple did not respond to a request for comment on the Busted Loop findings, as Forbes notes.

Moreover, the iBookstore will detail titles from the New York Times Best Seller list. Also, selections from both major and independent publishers including the Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Group and Simon & Schuster are to be featured in the iBookstore Gallery, as FierceMobileContent relates.

But the iPad is not only an e-reader and, in this respect, Apple has strongly emphasized that the iPad’s future users will have a spectacular number of over 140,000 applications to access. The story is still unfolding, as AppSlice data reveals that only 16,700 iPhone apps have received certification as iPad-compatible by this time, Forbes concludes.