Apple Vs. Amazon--Early Strategies, Part II

Yesterday I posted on the early strategies in the war brewing between Apple versus Amazon to win the hearts and minds of the e-reading public. Today there's a new battlefront.

App Advice reports here that the Apple iBookstore now includes free offerings from Project Gutenberg.

I've posted on Project Gutenberg before. On June 2, 2006, I reported here:

Project Gutenberg is the oldest digital library. It was founded in 1971 and is manned by volunteers who type, digitize and archive works that are in the public domain. In 35 years of operation, they have assembled 18,000 items.

A visit to the Project's website here reveals that in the nearly four years since, they've made enormous progress in digitizing more books. They now claim "you can download over 30,000 free ebooks to read on your PC, iPhone, Kindle, Sony Reader or other portable device."

In addition, they say, "Over 100,000 free books are available through our Partners, Affiliates and Resources." I clicked on that hyperlink to see who the partners, affiliates and resources were and got this list:

1 Partners
--[Distributed Proofreaders and iBiblio]

2 Sister Projects
2.1 Project Gutenberg of Australia
2.2 Project Gutenberg of Canada
2.3 Project Gutenberg Consortia Center
2.4 Projekt Gutenberg DE
2.5 Project Gutenberg Europe
2.6 Projekt Runeberg
2.7 ReadingRoo.ms

3 Affiliates
3.1 ClassicalArchives.com
3.2 LiteralSystems
3.3 Librivox.org
3.4 The Internet Archive
3.5 The Online Books Page
3.6 MobileBooks.org
3.7 RocketReader.com
3.8 Wattpad

4 Links to locations that provide software, tools, or Project Gutenberg eBooks in different formats
4.1 Wikibooks
4.2 Munseys
4.3 Breeno.org
4.4 The Early Canadiana Online Project
4.5 Andrew Sly's List of Canadiana in Project Gutenberg
4.6 GutenMark
4.7 AudioBooksForFree.com
4.8 Mobipocket
4.9 thefifthimperium.com
4.10 MobileRead

Amazon also includes e-books from Project Gutenberg for the Kindle. However, it appears Apple is poised to do Amazon one better. They're offering free downloads while, if you go to the Amazon bookstore, you'll have to pay $.99 to download the Project Gutenberg e-books. Here's The Prince and here's The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Nice play, Apple.

Back to your court, Amazon.