Apple iBookstore has opened in Australia

Why still no proper books in Ireland? WHY???

At least you have a few titles ... the Japanse book store is still showing just the free titles, with nothing new for more than six months!

Overpriced - limited stock... some of the books are the same prices as hard copy. That's ludicrous!

I have both Kindle and a US account (legitimately) and I doubt if I will ever give Apple Australia any money.

My advise: Give it a flick!

defecta: I am not sure how it is going in Melbourne but the Apple stores here in Brissie are going strong. Every time I am in there there are long lines at the register and the staff are doing the magic swipe with their portable card readers. Looks good to me. Maybe the downside is because of the market here and people are (usually) wiser here about debt and deeper debt than in other areas of the world. (just my two bob)

Cheers...

I agree with Raj. We are getting price gouged again and the range is very poor compared to the Kindle App.

I know we live on a big island far away from everyone but I really dont see how that justifies the pricing stucture of most Apple products here when compared to other countries. Maybe if the price gap wasn't so vast we would have less incentive grey import Apple stuff for less. And maybe Apple Australia wouldn't have reported a $200mill drop in revenue and posted a $6mill dollar loss in an earlier quarter this year. (http://www.smarthouse.com.au/Content_And_Downloads/Industry/T2A9Q4U3 Second paragraph, last sentence)

Sure the flagship Apple Stores are busy but who is buying? Meanwhile the smaller Apple resellers are languishing because of the hype around the Apple stores. Over price your products and put your reseller partners out of business by opening stores right around the corner seems like a strange business strategy to me. Well thats at least how it appears to be working in Melbourne Australia.

The New Zealand store is open, too. With the current exchange rate, most books work out to be just under US$9.99, so the pricing isn't too bad. However, the selection is limited, and I honestly cannot think of a good reason why I would use iBooks instead of Kindle.

The books on the iBookstore here in Australia are overpriced, and limited in number. Very limited when compared to the number of books available on the Kindle app.