Why independent publishers should try iBooks Author

Understanding the publication of books in the iBook Author, I came across an interesting article (eng) Janet Tokerud, whose translation I want to bring to your attention.

Independent publishers can greatly benefit from writing e-books.

Writing a book makes you an expert in one sitting. And if you are an independent publisher, you can increase your income from the sale of informational materials, especially e-books. Selling a small book can be a starting point for attracting customers and their service. You should write non-fiction books - those books that will have an incomparable advantage from the use of graphs, diagrams and interactive elements compared to the old-fashioned books.
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I thought iBooks Author for text books.

Not exactly, or rather not at all. In fact, Apple claims that iBooks Author allows you to create many other types of books. Just at the moment text books are the most popular. Think of the reports, their tremendous variety. If you publish a report, you don’t even have to talk to Apple or deduct a certain percentage to them. You can link to your website or send such a report by email.

The preparation of e-books was quite lame - until today.

We are stuck with confusion and limited tools for creating electronic books. This patchwork of marginal tools was ideal for book publishers, but was a nightmare for independent knowledge managers who could not spend their free time messing around with cumbersome technology. Writing is already difficult and time consuming.

But iBooks Author solves these problems.

It is easy to use and allows you to add tables, graphs and widgets to e-books. There is a trick: books made by iBooks Author work only on iPad. But I will explain why this restriction should not stop you.

System Requirements for iBooks Author.

First the bad news:

1. You must be the owner of the iPad to display the e-book during its development
2. You must have a Macintosh computer running OSX Lion.

But if you already have an iPad and a computer with OSX Lion, you don't need anything else.

Otherwise, read on to see if it is worth upgrading and / or expanding your technology now.

Good reasons for using iBooks Author.

This is a tool for creating electronic books for the end user .
There are no other options if you want your book to look good, but you don't want to spend a lot of time and money on InDesign.
A new Kindle format has appeared, which should be convenient for multimedia electronic books, but there is no tool for creating these books yet. This strikes the Kindle format of it from your list.

Apple has already made a breakthrough.

If you write novels, non-fiction books that do not require illustrations, you can cope with existing tools if you can figure them out, or hire someone to do this.
But independent publishers need to illustrate and visualize their ideas. Here you just open iBooks Author and add graphics within a few minutes.
On the iPad, they will look amazing.

Kindlestore vs iBookstore.

Now Kindle is the only alternative to the iPad. But technology does not stand still. Amazon began to abandon the “crooked” format of e-books (Mobi) that they used before and replaced it with what they call the Kindle 8. It allows you to use better graphics and interactive elements. Amazon has released Kindle Fire , which has abandoned the statement that E-Ink is the best technology for reading electronic books.

Many people, when comparing Kindle Fire with Kindle Touch, choose Kindle Fire

because of the bright colors and responsiveness of the device.
I do not think that everything will end well for E-Ink devices. They occupy a niche that quickly fills the iPhone, iPad, Android devices and Windows Mobile.

E-books have a great future.

Paper books are wonderful, but we are moving to the digital world and its possibilities are much greater.
For example, iBooks Author allows you to add a list of terms for your book. That makes it easy to make a custom dictionary (with search) at the end of the book. The reader automatically receives training cards that will allow him to view the records and check himself for understanding of the material. E-books for iPad are very convenient! Books work almost like apps, but you don’t have to be a programmer at all to make them.

Perhaps it is better to wait and see?

Perhaps this time Apple will hit the face. But I do not count on it. The price of waiting is that others will be ahead of you. Trendsetters will begin to comprehend the subtleties of the iBook Author as soon as it comes out. They will be the first to master the new platform, creating on it colorful and technologically advanced e-books that work on the most desirable gadgets of our time.

Some technologies are bad and not worth attention at an early stage.

iBooks Author is made by Apple, it is simple and easy to learn. Anyone can handle it. I like blogging software such as WordPress, and I would recommend it to independent publishers, but the iBooks Author is much more powerful and easier to use, like for example Pages or Keynote (Word or PowerPoint).

Resources.

There is already a book that teaches work in the iBooks Author, it is available for download for $ 4.99. Title iBooks Author: Publish your first book (eng). Author Maria Langer, recognized those. a writer who has written over 50 books. When iBooks Author just came out, Maria wrote, edited and prepared this book in just ten days.

Even if you don't have an iPad yet, you can watch Maria's book , as well as materials and videos at apple.com/ibooks-author .

The first version of the book of Mary was created in the traditional way to get the book in hand as quickly as possible. She is working on a cool version for iBooks2. I myself plan to buy an electronic version for my iPad when it becomes possible. But now I don’t want to miss the chance to read it as quickly as possible (even if in the usual way) and start working with iBook Author.