The European Commission has launched an investigation into the Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) iBookstore. They are checking to see whether Apple and a group of international publishers are fixing e-book prices. They are checking to see if Apple and the book publishers are violating antitrust rules. The 5 publishers include Livre, Harper Collins, Simon & Schuster, Penguin, and Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck.

Walter Isaacson is writing an authorized biography on Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs. Book publisher Simon & Schuster announced this past weekend that Isaacson’s book will be called “iSteve: The Book of Jobs” and it will be out in early 2012. Isaacson has been working on the biography since 2009.

Scribd is a document sharing website that has about 50 million monthly users and has about 50,000 documents uploaded daily.  The company was rolled out of Y-Combinator and eventually raised funding from Redpoint Ventures, Charles River Ventures, and The Kinsley Hills Group.  It was recently announced that Scribd signed an agreement with major publishing companies to host free e-books.

Through Scribd, users can upload PDFs, DOCs, and other text files.  Scribd then presents the document in a web Flash format.

Scribd signed agreements with Random House, Simon & Schuster, and Workman Publishing Co.  The terms of the agreement was undisclosed.  Scribd will provide a variety of book material at no cost.  This includes excerpts from books and even full books.  Full novels without much of an audience will be the ones made free.

[via Ars Technica]