Flipboard has integrated Apple’s iBookstore into its app. So now you can subscribe to any of the iBooks category listings. You simply add the “channel” (face it – it’s a catalog you’re adding) via the usually content panel. You can tell what is an Apple iBooks feed by the icon given.

Once you’re in the category page you’re able to flip through like any other Flipbook section. All of the images and copy match up with what you would see in iTunes and iBooks.

At any point you can click on the catalog and buy the eBook. Flipboard has everything that sells via the app under their affilate program. So Flipboard will get  3%-5% of the final sale. It’s a smart move for Apple as it gets their books and platform in front of people who are already readers. But I’m not feeling it just yet. . .

I mean – it’s a catalog. I use Flipboard daily (sometimes it feels like hourly). I subscribe to a gazillion RSS feeds, in Google Readers and then sort through them in Flipboard. It’s wonderful. All of the cool online book-related content Flipboard has gotten good at surfacing for me is now under the Entertainment category with a couple listed under Cool Curators category.  I guess as long as it’s always made clear as to what is catalog and what is sourced from all of the cool online stuff Flipboard has gotten good at surfacing for me, I won’t be too upset. I mean everyone has to make a buck.

I wonder what it would take to set something up so all the local bookstores could feed their new books into a reader like this? Seems simple enough, if you could get all of the bookstores to agree on one system of entry. But it would be very cool to wake up every morning and see what’s new on shelf at the book store down the street.