Apple Acquires "Pandora For Books" Booklamp For $15 Million

Nate the greatest (2261802) writes with news made public Friday that Apple has acquired a little known ebook company called Booklamp, a small Idaho-based ebook startup which is best known for the Book Genome Project. First shown off to the world in 2008, this project was conceived by Booklamp founder and CEO Aaron Stanton as a way of analyzing a book's pacing, dialog, perspective, genre, and other details in order to identify a book's unique DNA. Booklamp has been using the tech to sell various services to publishers, tech companies, and the like, but Booklamps's existing contracts were apparently cancelled earlier this year.

According to one industry insider the deal happened in April, but Apple managed to keep the news under wraps until just last night. No one knows for sure how Apple will use booklamp but there is speculation that Apple could launch an ebook subscription service similar to the week-old Kindle Unlimited, or they could just use Booklamp to drive ebook recommendations in what some are speculating is the world's second largest ebookstore.

Certainly Amazon never thought of that!

[billstewart]

Because nobody out there has "customers who bought X also bought Y and Z" features! (But maybe this one will let Apple take some more market share from Amazon.)

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[Paradise Pete]

You realize this is very different from "people bought X," right?

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[Zontar The Mindless]

Oy! Rule #1 regarding the harmonic space toads is that we don't talk about the harmonic space toads.

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[drkstr1]

It would have been more accurate to say it's like the "Music Genome Project" (Pandora is the the commercial application of these efforts), but for books. The idea is to essentially categorize everything by weighted tags.

forever payments

[nurb432]

no thanks, i want to own my content.

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[alvinrod]

Considering that most of the e-books sold (at least from the companies that are or might be selling monthly subscriptions for a buffet style approach) contain DRM, you don't really own it even if you make a lump sum payment either.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[nurb432]

You know what i meant.

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[R3d M3rcury]

Well, to each their own.

As always, it depends on a few things. I have no problems renting movies from Netflix and not owning them, but there are some movies I prefer to own. I can imagine the same thing--I've bought some "throw-away" books for airplanes and such and would be fine with the idea of just being able to pull up one to read. But there are some books that I've read that I enjoy and I want to keep and re-read every now and then. So Apple wins both ways--you "rent" the book, read it, decide you

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[Quirkz]

I used to think I wanted to own everything. Then I moved 20 boxes of books 9 times in 11 years, half of the time not even bothering to unpack. I eventually realized while I've got several hundred books that I value and revisit (good stories, reference, push on my kids when they're old enough, whatever), there's a large majority I'm happy to read once and not again, and also very happy not to have to store/organize/move.

Answer is an App..Not halting falling ipad sales!?

[tuppe666]

I find it astonishing especially considering the clunkyness of the iPad, that it has any book sales at all. It is not good for books(pdf textbooks is a dream and Jobsy pushed a new standard based on fixed sized for obvious lock-in). The iPad mini is a lot better for books, but unlike its big brother is unattractive compared to the opposition (Android on Small tablets...Large Phones and ebooks), and it has nothing in the Phablet form factor.

The iPad has lost momentum already, even though the tablet market co

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[Plumpaquatsch]

The iPad has lost momentum already, even though the tablet market continues to grow. IDC's Latest figures http://www.businesswire.com/ne... [businesswire.com]

Isn't it odd that Amazon doesn't even show up in that list? Looks like it's time for a Fire Sale. Oh, and drop the DRM already Amazon.

Did anyone ever try booklamp?

[swb]

I'm dubious on the Pandora style genome concept at least as implemented by Pandora. That being said, I've listened to it and gotten some artists/songs out of it that I'd probably never hear of, so I think there's something to the idea.

My main complaint is that I wish they would give you some kind of control panel for each "station" so that you could fine-tune the recommendations by genome key words, years, etc and not just get their choices. It'd also be nice to be able to just browse the genome database

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[Quirkz]

I've been using Pandora recently and very happy with a lot of new suggestions, too. It's been many times more effective than other sources in pointing me at music I've never heard before but really like.

For fine tuning, an interface might be nice, but just in case you overlooked it, I think the thumbs-up/thumbs-down on individual songs as they play does help with tuning.