Book publisher brings forward official biography of Apple co-founder, who told author: 'I want my kids to know me'

The official Steve Jobs biography will be released on 24 October after being rushed forward because of the Apple co-founder's death.

The authorised biography Steve Jobs is written by Walter Isaacson, the former managing editor of Time magazine. Customer pre-purchases have already made it the number one bestseller at Amazon. Publishing house Simon & Schuster had originally planned to release it on 21 November.

Isaacson has told how Jobs, in pain and too weak to climb stairs a few weeks before his death, wanted his children to understand why he wasn't always there for them. "I wanted my kids to know me," Isaacson quoted Jobs as saying in their final interview at Jobs' home in Palo Alto, California. "I wasn't always there for them and I wanted them to know why and to understand what I did."

Isaacson said he visited Jobs for the last time a few weeks ago and found him curled up in some pain in a downstairs bedroom. Jobs had moved there because he was too weak to go up and down stairs "but his mind was still sharp and his humour vibrant", Isaacson writes in an essay that will be published in Time magazine's 17 October edition.

Jobs died on Wednesday at the age of 56 after suffering a rare form of pancreatic cancer.

Simon & Schuster's synopsis says the book is based on more than 40 interviews with Jobs conducted over two years – as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues. "Although Jobs co-operated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against.

"Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple's hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership and values."

Another publisher, Bluewater Productions, has said it is rushing out a special edition e-book of its forthcoming comic book on Jobs.

The 32-page comic titled Steve Jobs: Founder of Apple is initially being sold on the NOOK and Kindle readers. The print edition is due for release at the end of October, with a portion of the profits from both issues going to the American Cancer Society.