Apple is bringing its just announced iPad tablet to the ebook market with the handheld device's iBooks app. iBooks is an ebook reader that Apple claims goes beyond what Amazon is offering with its Kindle ebook reader product.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs showed off iBooks during the company's special media event in San Francisco on Wednesday where the iPad was introduced.

iBooks sports a bookshelf-style interface for keeping track of and selecting ebooks that looks surprisingly similar to Delicious Monster's Delicious Library application for Mac OS X. Users can purchase and download titles from Apple's new iBookStore service.

Penguin, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan and Hachett are on board with iBookStore, and no doubt more publishers are on the way. Conspicuously missing from the publisher list, however, was McGraw Hill -- the company that was talking about the iPad on CNBC ahead of Apple's official announcement.

iBooks supports changing font sizes in books, embedded video, black and white or color books, and more.

Mr. Jobs is currently showing off additional iPad features. Be sure to check back with The Mac Observer for additional information about the iPad, iBooks and the iBookStore.

[Thanks to Engadget for the initial iPad details.]