Last week Apple unveiled their new education initiative, which included an expanded iTunes U and textbooks made for the iPad. To help foster the future of digital textbook authoring, Apple also introduced iBooks Author, a free application designed to make building books for the iPad easy for everyone to do. But is it? We're working on our own book, so we thought we'd share our notes after using the publishing application...
A few thoughts about iBook Author:
• Start your books in another program such as Scrivener, Pages or even Microsoft Word, and then dump it into iBooks Author. Those are much better word processing applications, and it's easier to share documents with a co-author if necessary.
• I wish there were more templates. As it stands, there are just six to choose from, and even for textbooks, they're pretty blah. Some additional templates in future upgrades would be nice.
• Additional flexibility in images and video types would be handy as well. This is an Apple product, why not use movies shot on an Apple product like the iPhone?
• Overall, even with its flaws, I do like iBooks Author. I've got my own book project that I'm working on right now, and I may dump it into the app to see how it all works out. We shall see.
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Comments (6)
I would urge any author to read this before using iBooks Author:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/apples-mind-bogglingly-greedy-and-evil-license-agreement/4360
Actually, I would urge any author to read any license agreement carefully before publishing their books, but pay extra close attention to the EULA for iBooks Author.
@joeyjoejoejr
1. nice username :-)
2. WOW. i knew apple was evil, but to try and retain the rights to OUTPUT, not just software? imagine if they implemented that across OSX as a whole???
I have a lot of concern about the EULA as well. I'd love to use this program, because it would fit my needs, but if Apple refuses my work, then I can't put it somewhere else according to the EULA.
Do you think this could be used to put together something like a baby book or wedding album to be viewed on an iPad (or computer) so that it integrates music, photos and movies?
While that all sounds evil, basically they are just protecting the authors from copyright protection. If you were to produce a book, which can only be played on an ipad anyway, and someone was able to copy it externally, your work could be distributed freely and openly and you would not be able to stop it. As an author, wouldn't you want protection from piracy?
You could also print out PDF's and have hard copy books printed from that, but you would need companion flip books for the video.
If you want more freedom to build a e-textbook, then you would need to build your own app. Which you could do and then distribute it on more devices and stores.
iBooks author does not create apps.
I'm sorry Funstraw, but I don't think it's protecting me, if I can't use the item I created. If I am the author, it's no protection to me, if I can't use the work I made because Apple's Eula says I can't take it somewhere else.