'iBooks Author' eBook Authoring App for Mac Now Available

[MacRumors]

Today, during their education press event, Apple announced the availability of the iBooks Author App that allows users to create interactive iBooks on their Mac.

Now anyone can create stunning iBooks textbooks, cookbooks, history books, picture books, and more for iPad. All you need is an idea and a Mac. Start with one of the Apple-designed templates that feature a wide variety of page layouts. Add your own text and images with drag-and-drop ease. Use Multi-Touch widgets to include interactive photo galleries, movies, Keynote presentations, 3D objects, and more. Preview your book on your iPad at any time. Then submit your finished work to the iBookstore with a few simple steps. And before you know it, you're a published author.

The App allows you to start with a number of templates and then customize your book with images, videos, multi-touch widgets and even Keynote presentations. You can then preview your book on your iPad and then submit it to the iBookstore for sale or free download.

iBooks Author is available for free in the Mac App Store. [App Store]

Article Link: 'iBooks Author' eBook Authoring App for Mac Now Available

 

[AriX]

Requires OS X Lion.

 

[sfwalter]

I like how you create a pdf version of your book. Won't have the interactive components but at least you can use the nice templates that iBooks Author has.

 

[ECUpirate44]

Requires OS X Lion.

It's the "Apple way" to force you to upgrade.

 

[Blakey.]

Requires OS X Lion.

Kind of unfortunate. I'm still on Snow Leopard, and I really don't have any reason to upgrade. I'm ready for iBooks 2 to be released so I can play around with that.

 

[C00rDiNaT0r]

It's the "Apple way" to force you to upgrade.

That depends on what you're upgrading from. It'd either cost you $30, or $599+ ...

 

[Kaibelf]

It's the "Apple way" to force you to upgrade.

It's 29 bucks. Poor baby.

 

[afireintonto]

i wish iBooks Author included a novel template. I'm a few chapters in to my latest, it'd be really wonderful to be able to publish myself so easily.

 

[CmdrLaForge]

I really interested in the approval process. And why only books for schools? On Kindle you can publish any book you like....

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i wish iBooks Author included a novel template. I'm a few chapters in to my latest, it'd be really wonderful to be able to publish myself so easily.

Me too...

 

[AriX]

It's 29 bucks. Poor baby.

I'm not complaining about the price - in fact, I already own Lion. But for a variety of reasons that I won't go into right now, upgrading will take a lot of effort, and I'm not willing to do it quite yet. It's alright though; I'm not exactly an author. But I look forward to playing around with this.

 

[brucewayne]

I understand that the iPad will provide a better experience, and I applaud Apple for trying to provide cheaper textbooks to children, but it requires an iPad when poorer students/school systems already have a Mac (or PC) that would have no problems displaying the material.

 

[Tulse]

Contrary to the rumours, it looks like the new iBooks are not using the EPUB3 standard -- instead Apple is using its own format. (At least I assume that's the case given that the books can contain Keynote presentations and other non-standard interactive content.)

 

[z3r0]

I'm still on Snow Leopard primarily because I'm not a fan of the iOSification of Mac OS X. Gimmicky.

Kind of unfortunate. I'm still on Snow Leopard, and I really don't have any reason to upgrade. I'm ready for iBooks 2 to be released so I can play around with that.

 

[See Flat]

It's 29 bucks. Poor baby.

I do have a macbook pro running lion.... but

I also have a dual core intel... and a g5 tower that cant.

That is what he means by apple's way to force you to upgrade to lion.

I know technology move one. But one of the selling points of getting us buying more expensive machines is that they would last of many years. My g5 tower is now over 7 years old and still works perfectly at all I throw at it. Logic, final cut, photoshop.

There would be no need to get rid of my g5 (used market is 100$ and I paid 3k for it) but will have too eventually because of software incompatibility.

 

[DotComCTO]

I'm still on Snow Leopard primarily because I'm not a fan of the iOSification of Mac OS X. Gimmicky.

Yup. Because as I use my Mac all day long, I can't help but to compare it with my iOS devices.



--DotComCTO

 

[guzhogi]

i wish iBooks Author included a novel template. I'm a few chapters in to my latest, it'd be really wonderful to be able to publish myself so easily.

That depends on what you're upgrading from. It'd either cost you $30, or $599+ ...

Agreed. My dad's an aspiring author (mainly poetry & novels) and this might be good for him if it had a more novel-like templates rather than textbook. Also, he has a Core Solo Mac Mini so to upgrade to Lion would cost $599+

 

[Henri Gaudier]

Apple, one of the most cash rich corps in the world and this s/ware is for the latest version of Lion only? Talk about trying to screw everyone in a time of global recession. WTF is wrong with 10.6?

 

[The Phazer]

Lion is so fundamentally broken that I'd rather try and write ebooks in bytecode than be forced to use it, so I guess no iBooks Author for me.

Phazer

 

[ECUpirate44]

It's 29 bucks. Poor baby.

I'm not complaining about the price as I too already own Lion. I'm simply saying it's unfortunate that Apple will not support new software on past generation operating systems.

Might I add your sarcastic remark is unnecessary.

 

[ZAPBoston]

I wonder if some ingenious user will find a way to sideload an iBook created with iBook Author into an iPad without publishing to iTunes first?

iBook Author sounds like a neat way to create interactive content read by the iBook 2 app on the iPad that isn't limited to only textbooks if you could find a way to distribute outside of iTunes (examples: Employee handbooks, marketing materials, etc.) It looks simpler and is priced cheaper than a more sophisticated application like InDesign.

 

[Phil de Bourg]

Yeah! iWeb come back ... oups... iBook author is born!

Is this me, or it's looks exactly like iWeb...
So Apple finally update iWeb, I'm happy

 

[nepalisherpa]

"Life at MacRumors" and "Anxious wait for Jailbreak" coming up soon in iBooks near you!

 

[moosegoose]

Very excited, but as a professional book designer/creator, the key things here, for me, are:
1. Just how customisable is the authoring software. Can I do what I want to do rather than what Apple wants to let me? From first glance it looks closer to Pages than InDesign. Maybe there's a more professional package coming along (Final Cut rather than iMovie). Certainly hope so.
2. The elephant in the room: Approval. What criteria? How long? The current iBook store has a lousy rep here.
3. Is it a closed format? Is my company's hard work going to be rewarded by publishing to a closed eco-system if Apple lose market share to others in the tablet wars, and their closed ebook format goes the way of Betamax?

Anyone got any ideas?

 

[Michaelgtrusa]

This is nice.

 

[porky]

I'm not complaining about the price as I too already own Lion. I'm simply saying it's unfortunate that Apple will not support new software on past generation operating systems.

Might I add your sarcastic remark is unnecessary.

I don't like the finder in Lion, even the font size of the left column, too big on my screen (can you change that btw?)