Does an author have the ability to update a ibooks author book once it is published, much like an app?

Question

I would love to create books like I create apps, where I can create an initial version, but improve upon it without having to have the customer purchase a whole new book.

Answer 1

I've done a little research.  A little research is a dangerous thing.  The ISBN is a cataloging system for commercial books.  The Library of Congress catalogs books with its own system.  Libraries can use that. The Library of Congress will issue an LCCN, or Library of Congress Control Number, free of charge. 
In Canada, ISBN numbers are issued by the Canadian government.  Free, as a means to encourage cultural development.  The US, on the other hand, has plenty of cultural development and not enough profit centers, so the monopoly of issuing ISBN numbers was granted to a single company, which sells them.   I believe so-called "aggregators" also provide them to authors for a fee. 
It's really Apple's choice to require ISBN's on the ebooks it sells.  I don't believe Amazon does. Apple could just as easily require the LCCN instead, or create its own cataloging system.
Strictly speaking, every edition of a book in a different format would require its own ISBN. One for iBook, one for Kindle,  one for print... on and on.  It runs into money.
I think that for the iBooks platform to realize its full potential as a disruptive technology, it will need to get beyond the ISBN bottleneck.
Compare the iBooks system with the App system. The App system is wide open. Because the "book" business has hundreds of years of tradition and baggage, anything with the word "book" attached to it drags some of that baggage along with it.  At least until some incredibly powerful corporate entity with a reputation for freeing up creative energies comes along and disrupts the old model. 
DB