Jan 19 2012
Is iBooks Author the killer app for eBook creation?
I like eBooks, and I have a Kindle. I also have a few old books like I’d like to scan and convert into ebooks, maybe give them away or even sell them. Amazon is very good at ebook publishing, even from independents, but because of the format that the Kindle uses (either mobi or azw) creation of ebooks can be quite laborious, especially when you don’t use software like Microsoft Word.
Apple have stepped up and offered a free application called iBooks Author (available on the Mac App Store) which seems to offer everything that a budding ebook author/editor might want. The only downside is that the format it exports in, can’t be read on a Kindle. So now I’m faced with a choice – ditch my Kindle and get an iPad (as there is Kindle software for the iPad) or hang on and hope that Amazon have something similar in the works, so that I can keep my Kindle, and build my ebooks for that. A friend has an iPad so I think a good test would be to scan, edit and build an ebook with iBooks Author, and test it that way.
Of course it would be great of Amazon and Apple decided on a common format, so we don’t have the Betamax vs VHS, Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD etc format wars all over again.
http://www.apple.com/ibooks-author/
EDIT – A quick test has thrown up some annoyances, one being you have got to have an iPad attached to you Mac in order to test even the basic functionality of your ebook. If all you have is an iPhone or iPod Touch then you have to export your ebook in it’s entirety, and transfer via the USB cable. How difficult would it have been to create a ‘virtual’ iPad using the Xcode environment in order to test?
