The iBooks Application Comes to the Desktop Mac by Jason C Carborport

Exciting news for authors and their audience alike: iBooks application has come to the Mac.

Previou sly, the iBooks application was limited to iOS devices, meaning you could only read iBooks on your iPad or iPhone. As of the new OSX Maverick update (due out early this fall), Apple is bringing its reading application to the Mac as well - and it supports all the interactive features of books created with iBooks Author.

Finally, you can read any of Apple's 1.8 million iBookstore titles right from your laptop or desktop computer.

Everything people have come to expect from the mobile version of the application is included in the desktop version too. You can highlight, pinch, browse, swipe, take notes and more are preserved features.

However, there are also a few other awesome features we haven't seen before such as automatic citations. If you're a student (or anyone who uses quotes in their work), this handy little feature is about to make your academic paper writing life so much better. When you quote an excerpt while writing a paper, iBooks will automatically add a citation for you.

Another amazing thing - when you take notes, highlight passages, or add a bookmark on your Mac, iCloud sends them to all your devices automatically. That way, it doesn't matter which device you used. iCloud even remembers which page you're on. So if you start reading on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch, you can pick up right where you left off on your Mac.

Amazon has Kindle reading apps for PC and Mac, though you can't purchase ebooks through the apps. Nook has a Windows 8 app that allows purchasing and reading, but doesn't have a Mac app.

What does this mean for authors?

Your market just grew - bigger. A lot bigger.

At the WWDC event, Apple announced that its Mac install base has grown to 72 million machines, a number that has grown 100% in the last five years.

If you're planning to sell or are already distributing your book in the iBookstore, your market just quadrupled with the output of the new iBooks application for Mac. Now anyone who owns a Mac (not just an iPhone or iPad) can buy and download your book on their desktop or laptop computer.

Although not explicitly mentioned, it appears as if all new machines will be released with iBooks already installed - making it that much quicker for users to start reading on the desktop.