Flipboard, the popular social news reader platform, has partnered with Apple to launch a new section in iOS apps called Books which, surprisingly, highlights select books the iPhone maker sells on its own iBookstore. The new Books section is now live in Flipboard iOS apps in ten countries. It’s customized with 25 new sections containing the most popular books from Apple’s iBookstore. “It’s like browsing in a bookstore, right from your Flipboard”, the company says. The new section is localized for the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Italy and Spain…
Flipboard announced the news in a post over at its blog. The company has now updated its free iPhone and iPad app with support for iBookstore content.
In addition to a write-up of the book from the publisher and an image of the book, each “article” also contains a quick way to download the book from the iTunes store.
Once you get it, you can naturally enjoy all the features of iBooks on your iPhone or iPad, including fully illustrated books like children’s picture books, art books, photo books and cookbooks.
This is what the new section looks like.
The new ‘Books’ section in Flipboard for iOS. Click to enlarge.
The Next Web found out that Flipboard earns about five percent on each iBook sale through its apps, allegedly part of the iBookstore affiliate program.
You can download Flipboard’s iOS app free of charge, right from the App Store.
What do you think about this unexpected partnership?
Are people going to love the ability to access iBookstore content from within Flipboard iOS apps?