Updated Apple app allows textbook buys

Apple Thursday promised to reinvent the textbook and offer a new experience for students and teachers through an update to its iBooks app for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.

The update -- which Apple called iBooks 2 and which already is available on its App Store -- will allow for textbooks to be sold through the app, which had sold novels, nonfiction and poetry.

All textbooks sold through the free app, which is available only for Apple's devices, will be priced at $14.99 or less -- far below paper books that fill college bookstores.

But the main allure might not be the price as much as interactive features. Apple, which announced the iBooks update at a media event in New York at the Guggenheim Museum, said the iBooks textbook exceeds paper texts in terms of engagement because it is durable and searchable and offers easy highlighting and note-taking, interactive photo galleries, videos, and 3-D models and diagrams.

Apple said the move makes sense given that more that 1.5 million iPads are used in schools. Not mentioned by Apple, though, was any sort of program that would offer discounted iPads to students, teachers or schools.

The tech giant has enlisted the heavyweights of textbook publishing -- Pearson, McGraw-Hill and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt -- to sell textbooks through iBooks 2. Combined, they make 90 percent of U.S. textbooks. Smaller publishers will produce iBooks 2 texts as well.