“Estimates put Apple’s iBook Store share of the electronic books market at about 20-percent, far below behemoth Amazon,” Ron McElfresh writes for McSolo. “Not long after launching iBooks Store, Apple published the iBooks Author apps so Mac users could create and publish iBooks for iPad.”
“Unfortunately, modern technology seems to have found a black hole in the archaic publishing industry, and few new titles have been authored and published with iBooks Author,” McElfresh writes. “Why not?”
“I consider iBooks Author to be one of Apple’s most underrated and underused applications on the Mac. Creating and interactive multi-media electronic book isn’t child’s play, but it’s simple enough to create books that go far beyond what Kindle or Kindle Fire devices can display,” McElfresh writes. “Apple couldn’t make publishing a book from your Mac to the iBook Store much easier. All it takes is a description and a few clicks and your publication is, well, published and ready for purchase… If you’ve ever wanted to write your own book and have it published for sale online, there is no easier way than Apple’s iBook Author app. And it’s free.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
Apple’s iBooks Author lets Mac users build astounding texts – February 13, 2012
USA Today’s Baig: Apple scores with iPad textbooks and iBooks Author for Mac – February 2, 2012
With iBooks 2 and iBooks Author, Apple bids to own publishing’s future – January 19, 2012
Apple education event: Winners and losers – January 19, 2012
Apple reinvents textbooks with iBooks 2 for iPad – January 19, 2012
Apple unveils all-new iTunes U app for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch – January 19, 2012
MacDailyNews presents live coverage of Apple’s ‘Big Apple’ education event – January 19, 2012
Does iBooks author allow anyone to write a story and get it published and sell it in the ibooks store? if so, whats the charge?
Yes it does. The charge is the same 30% of the cost the author sets.
I wrote a free book and it was published – Biographies – Memories. Ron Norris. Just do it!
why free? why not charge a couple of dollars at least?
Not everyone is a money obsessed jerkoff, perhaps?
That’s why this app is so underrated. There’s no charge. Create the book, get it approved by Apple for sale in the iTunes Store, set a price, and wait for ca-ching! Apple takes their usual 30-percent. I suspect the problem is that most authors are not page layout designers and artists.
So go to a major New York publisher if you want page layout help. Just stamp you foot and hold your breath until they give you a contract.
Anyone can write a book and publish it in iBooks store. I think the figures are the same as everything else. Free to host if the book is free and you keep 70% if you sell the book. There are other things to be aware of as well if your a professional book seller, etc. https://www.apple.com/itunes/working-itunes/sell-content/books/book-faq.html
Duh! This is simple! For once Apple needs to get their head out of the sand and make iBooks available everywhere including android, Apple TV, and windows. Books should be universal and not segregated like the music stores. I buy amazon only because I can read them on my work windows PC.
Apple needs an ultra light Kindle-like ereader that allows for reading under any condition for weeks between charges. Until that time, iBooks will forever be an also-ran instead of a force in the publishing industry.
iBooks Author is underused because it is a piece of junk. Despite wing available for several years, it has had a paltry history of updating. iBooks Author is crippleware. It forces you to build out ebooks that are not cross-platform. too many blind alleys in this software.
Apple really blew it. Thjey could have created a tool of immense pawer, encouraging authors to spend time creating rich content. Instead, they got a product that is only marginally more advanced than any other eBook solution out there.
iBooks Author was just updated. So HUH?!
It’s a useful tool. There are other useful tools. If you’d like another great FREE tool for both eBook reading and creation:
http://calibre-ebook.com
I agree with some of the earlier comments. I am a successful textbook author. I cannot mandate an iPad at my own university, let alone any other university. As much as I would like to use iBooks Author, I simply cannot if Apple restricts the market as they currently do.
The idea of an iBooks Reader app for non-iPads is a good one. I already use a Kindle Reader app on my iPad.
Bottom line? Writing books takes time. Time is money. Authors write to make money on their time investment. But Apple is artificially restricting the size of a book’s market with iBooks. Sounds a lot like a Microsoft strategy; a painful admission since I use exclusively Macs, iPads, and iPhones. (Sorry, Apple, from someone often accused of being a “fan boy” by his students.)
I fully agree. Apple should do more to push/promote the enhanced iBooks made with iBooks Author to distinguish themselves from the Kindle books
I created all my books in my Graphically Enhanced Manuals (GEM) series for Final Cut Pro X, Logic Pro X and GarageBand X with iBooks Author, available as interactive multi-touch books on the iBook Store. http://www.DingDingMusic.com/Manuals
I wish iBA had parity with Pages. I wrote a 150+ page manual in iBA, but later converted it to Pages as I couldn’t export to the format I needed and it was like going back in time compared with Pages.
iBooks Author still lacks some basic functionality … lack of built in pinch and zoom for full page images being the most glaring example. It’s a nice, but still in-its-infancy, piece of software.
I think Sherlock is Apple’s most under-used application.
I have looked at iBooks Author a few times over the past year or so and I agree with the comments made here about the narrow functionality on offer.
I figured that what I would really need to do is build an app to get the functionality I want, but that is a vastly more complex process.
If you just want a simple e-book maybe iBooks Author will suffice, but it seems clumsy to use. As for the “widgets” – I couldn’t see a use for any of them.
I used iBooks Author to create a book for my grandchildren. It tells a story of an adventure they have on the train and includes photos of them as well as clips from one of their favourite movies, The Railway Children. I did not submit it to iTunes but simply exported it to their iPad. They love it. Apple should promote the ability to do this more than it does.
Why bother learning it if Apple’s just gonna get bored and kill it off anyway?