Apple released iBook2, and along with it a free authoring tool iBook Author 3 days ago. Apple hopes to re-invent the text books industry by working with major text books publishers such as Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw-Hill and Pearson to deliver educational titles on the iBookstore℠ with most priced at $14.99 or less.

The new iBooks 2 app is available as a free download from the App Store™. iBooks Author is also available as a free download from the Mac App Store. It aims to let anyone with a Mac create stunning iBooks textbooks, cookbooks, history books, picture books and more, and publish them to Apple’s iBookstore.

We have tried the iBook Author and find it very easy to create an ebook. Below are some steps:

Fire up iBook Author and open a new file. There are six templates available. Apple’s emphasis for iBooks Author is to create a vast library of low-cost textbooks, hence the six templates are all textbook-oriented.

Then you can add/edit eBook easily using a very intuitive user interface (much easier than Xcode). There are a number of page layouts available, such as Chapters, Sections, Copyrihgt, Dedication, Blank Pages and 1 to 3 col format. You can also insert functions such as interactive galleries, sound or video media, Keynote presentations, interactive review quizzes, interactive images, 3D rotatable images, and HTML code.

iBooks Author allow you toggle between portrait and landscape orientations to see what the end product is going to look like on an iPad.

Once you are done with your book, you can do a preview by clicking the preview icon. You need to connect your Mac to the iPad in order to do the preview.

To publish the book, you need to have an iBookstore seller account. You can easily applied for free book account. However for paid book account, you need to have a bank account set up to receive proceeds through electronic payment, an ISBN for each title, and a US tax ID.

You also need to install iTunes Producer to publish the book. To download the iTune Producer, you need to create a itune account.

In conclusion, iBook Author is going to make a sea change to the text book industry in the next few years. And probably very soon, we will see school children carrying e-textbooks on iPad, rather than carry a heavy school bag.

Please contact us at enquiry@osweb2design.com if you need help to create an iBook using iBook Author.