I have spent the past few weeks researching the e-book options available for the iPad.  I had a couple of motives for doing this research.  Professionally, I wanted to learn how our school could integrate e-books available on the iPad into our teaching and classrooms.  Personally, I have a daughter with special needs so I was also interested in learning about how e-books could be interactive and allow her to enjoy books that typically she could not read.  I have spent many hours searching the iTunes store, reading articles online and downloading apps to try out.

What have I learned?  There are so many different ebook apps available for the iPad that it can be tough to sort them out. So I started to focus on a couple main apps, most free to download. These apps provided free e-books but also contained books that needed to be purchased.

The first application I looked at was Apples iBooks app.  Truth be told….I am an Apple guy. I have a Macbook Pro, an iPhone 5, Apple TV at home and an iPad.   So I figured this was my best option and a good place to start. The iBooks app had a good selection of books both new and old. Some were free but most cost money.  Some were also interactive and the iBooks store contained published books using the iBooks Author app.  The second application I looked at was Kindle for the iPad. This app has by far the largest selection of books. Probably because it accesses the massive Amazon book catalogue.  So whatever isn’t available through iBooks is most likely accessible through Kindle.

The iBooks and Kindle apps seem to be the most popular e-book apps available on an iPad.  However, there are so many more. There are individual apps that are interactive books such as Alice in Wonderland or Toy Story Read-Along.

There is also Nook, Kobo and Google Books.  With an endless budget the possibilities are almost limitless to the books available.  However, it will take some time to figure out which application will work best for your classroom or home.