I’m no author. I’m not literary genius. I’m just a guy who is going to try to write ebooks. I think I have some marketable ideas. I’ve heard a lot of good things about your program and if it could output to iBooks Author I’d buy it in a heart beat. iBooks Author is Apples newly released software to make iBooks.
Check out our latest blog post on this topic, here. In summary, there is no way to write directly to the .iba format. Apple has decided to keep that secret, as they have for their .pages format. This is how they typically operate. We will be doing the best we can do, which is making the final transition from your project to iBook Author as easy as possible for those who wish to use that interface for their publishing.
I’ve experimented with iBooks Author over the last few days.
Some early impressions: if you already know Pages and KeyNote, iBA is easy to learn.
Many of the commands and format panels are quite similar.
The template options are limited to only six styles.
But you may make changes to fonts, colors, and objects as you wish.
Placement of images is easy; of a movie, very difficult.
The film must be in the proper format & size, as specified by QuickTime export.
And directions in the Help file on movie import are incomplete and ambiguous.
You may export only in iba, pdf, or txt. And sell iba only through iBooks.
Legality of that aside, iBooks requires you to buy an ISBN ($125 & up) for each title.
And also submit your book to the lengthy Apple “approval” process.
In all, it’s a good formatting tool for text and images.
Especially if you want to create PDF files for free or cheap distribution.
Adding Interactive media is more complex and will create enormous files.
It’s far easier to work with Scrivener and turn out .mobi files for Kindle.
And right now, Kindle is nearly 70% of the e-book market.
You may want to read this post about iBooks before using the software, zdnet.com/blog/bott/apples-m … ement/4360
I was just about to post the same warning. Bott’s head and lede:
“Apple’s mind-bogglingly greedy and evil license agreement”
Summary: Over the years, I have read hundreds of license agreements, looking for little gotchas and clear descriptions of rights. But I have never, ever seen a legal document like the one Apple has attached to its new iBooks Author program."
ps
What’s the issue?
If you want to use iBooks Author, agree to Apple’s terms. If you don’t want to use iBooks Author or don’t agree with the terms…
…do something else.
Apple don’t have a monopoly on iBooks.
The “greedy and evil” line was Bott’s, not mine. His point was one I thought well taken. If you don’t care…
… read something else.
ps
I don’t want to read any more. Can I sleep now?
The issue is just that Apple’s lawyers used some ambiguous wording in their EULA - I think users have a right to raise that as a silly mistake, as it’s almost certainly not Apple’s intention. Dropbox got a lot of stick not long ago over exactly the same thing - there was some wording in an updated EULA that could be interpreted as Dropbox having the rights to your files. That wasn’t the meaning they intended and the Dropbox team quickly issued a clarifying statement and amended the EULA to clear up the misunderstanding. Apple needs to do the same, as I am pretty sure that by the “Work” generated by iBooks they only mean the .iba or .ibook file and not the content itself. (Of course, Dropbox doesn’t have the luxury of a legion of vocal fans who will defend everything they do no matter what. 
)
Anyway, back on topic: there is a beta of Scrivener for Mac now available in the Beta Testing area of the forum that supports exporting to “iBooks Author Chapters (.docx)” via Compile - this will export to multiple .docx files each containing a chapter, so that you can drag them into iBooks Author.
All the best,
Keith
If I didn’t care; I wouldn’t post. My point was that this is a hysterical over-reaction.