Smolinski - iBooks Author: Publishing with iBooks Author on Apples iBooks Platform

iBooks Author

Publishing With iBooks Author on

Apples iBooks Platform

George Smolinski, M.D.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter One: Writing for iBooks Formatting and Designing

Chapter Two: Publishing to the iBooks Store

Chapter Three: Apple and You Maintain a Healthy Relationship

Conclusion

Disclaimer

Introduction

A book is a dream that you hold in your hand.

Neil Gaiman

A stack of books and a cup of tea still make up for a relaxing Sunday evening for many people, but the stack of books is quietly losing ground to eBooks. Technology hasnt forgotten to work its magic upon the age-old bundles of paper, now granting us the ability to read what we want regardless of time and place. eBooks, the virtual twin of books have become much more interactive and entertaining along with the addition of an e.

The market of eBooks and eReaders has been dominated by Amazon with its immense online book store and the Kindle line of eReaders from the beginning. Seeing the potential growth of this industry around 2010, Apple decided to take a jab at Amazon. They made a splash in the tablet world with the introduction of iPads, along with which iBooks came to be soon afterwards.

Sleek and inherently book-like, iBooks is an eBook reader app that works within the Apple ecosystem, running on OS X and iOS devices exclusively. Backed by the dedicated iBooks Store, it delivers a unique reading experience on Macs, iPads, iPod Touch devices and iPhones (running iOS 4 and later). Apple has integrated iBooks as a system app with the launch of iOS 8, further ensuring that users reap the benefits of it. Read this last sentence again and note the significance of this fact. A quick lesson from history will demonstrate the importance of this latest move by Apple. Remember Netscape? Remember what happened to Netscape or perhaps you dont know the back story? Netscape used to be the browser of choice in the 1990s. In the Pre-Google Era, a newcomer then decided to try to knock off Netscapethat newcomer was Internet Explorerand they did so by having their program installed on the most popular home computer at the time: Dell. Think back to, Dude, buy a Dell. Everyone was buying a Dell and everyone was using the prepackaged software on their new Dells, which included Internet Explorer. Fast forward to today and Internet Explorer is still the dominant internet browser today even with Google Chrome and Mozillas Firefox. This same strategy is now being used by Apple and remember that there are over one billion iDevices in use around the world today. Think about thatone billion devices with iBooks compared to Amazons paltry 300 million credit cards on file. Apple has three times the market share right out of the gate and iBooks stands to be huge.

With Apple finally giving its nod to big screens with the newest iPhone 6, reading on iPhones has also become much more comfortable. Youll have to be a downright Apple hater to refuse that kind of customer base. Their tech and devices are preferred by most people around the age of 18-24, who readily embrace Apples elegant and simple design philosophy, not to mention the ease of use.

Whats more, iBooks has a dedicated authoring software program named iBooks Author, which helps to create beautiful books rich with multimedia for an interactive reading experience. From cookbooks to textbooks, the power at your fingertips to create immersive content will only be limited by your imagination. iBooks is here to stay, so I encourage you to read this book carefully, as it will serve as an elemental guide to publishing on this platform, one that has the propensity to be bigger than Amazon!

Writing for iBooks Formatting and Designing

In a badly designed book, the letters mill and stand like starving horses in a field. In a book designed by rote, they sit like stale bread and mutton on the page. In a well-made book, where designer, compositor and printer have all done their jobs, no matter how many thousands of lines and pages, the letters are alive. They dance in their seats. Sometimes they rise and dance in the margins and aisles.
Robert Bringhurst , The Elements of Typographic Style

If youve already published for platforms like Kindle or Kobo, you know that you need to have a properly formatted, finished document in a file format supported by the platform. ePub short for electronic publication is supported by all platforms as its a free and open eBook standard. Some platforms also support word documents, PDFs (with certain limitations), etc. There are two main methods you can use to design a book for iBooks:

1. Design with Apples proprietary iBooks Author software
2. Use dedicated third-party software such as Adobe InDesign

Having written your piece of work on a word processor document (like Microsoft Word) is essential in both cases. These publishing tools arent really made for the purpose of starting from scratch and do not function well as word processing platforms. Whatever the method you choose (iBooks Author or Adobe InDesign), you will end up with either a file with an .ibooks extension or an .epub file as they are the only formats accepted by the iBooks Store. Each output format has its own uses and limitations, which we will discuss later. First let us consider Apples in-house solution.

Designing with iBooks Author

In essence, iBooks Author packs advanced multimedia and interaction capabilities into a regular eBook editor. Its more of a freeware program on Apple steroids, running exclusively on Mac OS X (and later) devices. iBooks Author is not a writing environment, but an editing program which can be used to make content come to life as one reads it. It employs widgets that can play media, provide pop-ups etc. which work interactively for a dynamic user experience.

To get started, first download the setup for free from the Mac App Store . Its a 412 MB download (version 2.2 size), and be sure to check that your Mac meets the system requirements of the software. Apple plays by its own rules, with support for iBooks Author limited to Mac computers. You just cant install iBooks Author on any other operating system.

Once the installation finishes, open the application and look around. You will be greeted with a page to choose a template for a new file. Alternatively you can start working on an existing file, plus import ePub files, Adobe InDesign IDML files, etc. iBooks Author is mainly a WYSIWYG What You See Is What You Get kind of software, so finding your way around it is relatively simple (its not like iTunes!) We will continue explaining the interface with templates, adding text, media and other items from here onwards.

• Templates

Firing up iBooks Author brings you first to the Template Chooser window. It contains many pre-built templates designed for use with textbooks, classics, photo collections, guides and manuals etc. Theres a blank template as well, allowing you to start fresh and make it up as you go. A simple Google search will give you many more custom-built templates, both free and for a small fee. You can even get a tailor-made template by hiring a freelancer online (which, by the way, is something we offer at Gutenberg Reloaded ).

All templates include the main elements of a book such as book title, Table of Contents, Chapters and separate sections with pages, Glossary etc. Templates are categorized as Landscape and Portrait, which changes the content accordingly when viewed on an iPad. Some are optimized for landscape reading, others for portrait and there are also templates supporting both orientations.

You need to choose a template before starting to work on a book, which cannot be changed afterwards. You can choose to change the orientation youre viewing the book by clicking the Orientation buttons in the toolbar, but this does not change the templates orientation. Its simply for previewing how readers will view a given page.