Apple today held a special media event to unveil several initiatives aimed at upending the textbook industry and making educational content widely accessible via apps and iOS devices. After all was said and done, two new apps were introduced and one overhauled to bring textbooks into the mobile industry and with it a cooperative publishing community.

Here’s a recap of the major announcements from Apple today:

* iBooks Author app: This free Mac app (App Store link) gives users the ability to create multi-touch books for iPad. This app is not limited strictly for textbook creation. To the contrary, Apple envisions ordinary people using the iBooks Author app to create cookbooks, history books, picture books and more for iPad. More importantly, books created via iBooks Author can be submitted to the iBookstore for sale or free download.

This is what Apple had to say about iBooks Author in its press release:

“iBooks Author is also available today as a free download from the Mac App Store and lets anyone with a Mac create stunning iBooks textbooks, cookbooks, history books, picture books and more, and publish them to Apple’s iBookstore. Authors and publishers of any size can start creating with Apple-designed templates that feature a wide variety of page layouts. iBooks Author lets you add your own text and images by simply dragging and dropping, and with the Multi-Touch™ widgets you can easily add interactive photo galleries, movies, Keynote® presentations and 3D objects.”

* iTunes U app: This free universal (optimized for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad) app (App Store link) provides access to complete courses from participating universities. The app is integrating much of the content available through the former standalone iTunes U including over 500,000 free lectures, books, and other resources.

This is what Apple had to say about the iTunes U app in its press release:

“The all-new iTunes U app lets teachers create and manage courses including essential components such as lectures, assignments, books, quizzes and syllabuses and offer them to millions of iOS users around the world. The iTunes U app gives iOS users access to the world’s largest catalog of free educational content from top universities including Cambridge, Duke, Harvard, Oxford and Stanford, and starting today any K-12 school district can offer full courses through the iTunes U app.”

* iBooks 2.0: iBooks app (App Store link) has been updated to include the availability of textbooks filled with interactive features, diagrams, photos and videos. All textbooks will be available for purchase for $14.99 or less. Significantly, the three largest textbooks publishers support this initiative.

This is what Apple had to say about iBooks 2.0 in its press release:

“Leading education services companies including Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw-Hill and Pearson will deliver educational titles on the iBookstore with most priced at $14.99 or less, and with the new iBooks Author, a free authoring tool available today, anyone with a Mac® can create stunning iBooks textbooks.”

In my opinion, the most significant announcement is iBooks Author. iBooks Author will do for books what the App Store did for apps. All of a sudden, anybody with the iBooks Author app and an idea can publish a book and make it available for free or sale in the iBookStore. Moreover, the hurdles to create a book are lower than an app since creating an app requires technical skills. Creating a book, on the other hand, with the iBooks Author app requires only an idea and decent writing skills.

It will be very interesting to see how the inventory of books available in the iBookstore swells over the coming months. It will be significant.

App Store links:
iBooks Author
iTunes U
iBooks 2.0