Hello. I have been a self published author for over twenty years (give or take).
I have also worked extensively in the field of professional entertainment. Some of my “claims to fame” are Blu-ray and DVD titles (yeah…remember those lol) for big FOX movies like Wild, Fresh Off the Boat and many others.
I’ve also been into many other forms of digital media, for as long as I can remember. From doing audio design for theater, to brochures for my own magician business, to doing motion graphics for commercials, etc. I have been present.
My main bag of tools has always been from both Adobe and Apple.
Today, I’d like to talk about iBooks Author and why I think it was a mistake for Apple to remove the software and try to replace its functionality with Pages.
Now please let me be perfectly clear. You still CAN use it (and I do). They just aren’t updating it anymore and have removed it from their store.
The appearance of iBooks Author is absolutely beautiful and extremely well organized. This software was created for the specific purpose of creating iBooks, or what is now called Apple Books. To be clear, I don’t have a problem with the name change (other than it made me rename a good chunk of my empire, damn Apple, lol),
This was also one of the last original projects that Steve Jobs created, not long before he died. So in that sense, it also hurt that Apple rejected him.
Yes. For sure. There are many similarities between this and Pages. You can absolutely create and publish both Apple and eBooks on both. It’s not that hard to do. I really love Apple’s performance regarding thumbnails on the left and their workable content on the right. This has been reflected in much of its software and gives it a nice familiarity, from program to program.
One of the many points of contention is the Widgets panel in iBooks Author. This does not exist in Pages. While the gallery remained, you can’t insert Keynote files (personally my favorite feature), interactive images, 3D, popovers, lists, scrollable sidebars, or HTML.
The fact that you could also preview your book on an iDevice was incredibly helpful.
This is a BIG part of what made this software so amazing and ahead of its time. To my knowledge, Amazon doesn’t have anything that can remotely compare, to this day.
Apple should have marketed the more features, the better, and taught classes in their stores about this software. If there were any, I don’t remember them.
The publishing process is also incredibly easy and straightforward.
When all is said and done, Apple even helps you out with some really cool marketing tools.
All in all, I think this was a missed opportunity and Apple shouldn’t have made the move. It’s just as well, I guess. Software updates were sparse (actually, as were updates to the current line of desktop software, in general).
If you are looking for a software program to publish a book, I would definitely take a look at all your options before deciding on one. See what Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Adobe, and anyone else you might be thinking of have to offer.
Really study your individual tool sets, to determine whether or not it is right for you (if there is a charge for it), BEFORE you buy.
Thank you for reading.
Have a nice day!
