iBooks Author App Reviews

Finally a decent tool for creating your own books! Just imagine the possibilities!

Why no iPhone support? :(

...bookmarks do not work. The option remains greyed out. Theres a discussion about this bug on the Apple Support site so I assume itll be fixed.

This apps is great, we can write texts, inport images, videos, keynotes, widgets, but I feel really limited by the COLLADA file format for 3D objects. I would like to have more versatile file format like .3ds, .fbx, .obj and AutoCAD files.

I cant imagine any publisher using this version of the program to write their textbooks. Very rudimentary formatting available for objects. Shapes do not have separate body and stroke. Text can be added to, but not edited. There is not even an "Import" choice on the menu. See other reviews for more limitations. This iteration is not even close to Apples own Pages for functionality, not to mention MS Word; its not even on the same planet with InDesign for functionality. For myself, Ill wait at least until version 1.1 before spending any serious time with the application.

What does this mean exactly? Does this mean that if I choose to sell my work through IBooks, then Apple gets a cut? How is this different from musicians ponying up a fee to sell through ITunes? Musicians get access to a worldwide market inclusive of advertising and epayment, Apple makes a profit for developing and carrying the overhead no longer poured into producing CDS, texts, fees to physical stores etc…nothing is free.

Was going to start writhing my novel but after reading the EULA… well you should read it.

Publish you own books in a simple, yet powerful way. iBooks Author has easy-to-use software, and its books are published to the growing iBooks store. Good job apple. Although , I should say, average job apple, because all your products are awesome.

To those complaining about the EULA, you seriously need some perspective in your life. "Apple is forcing me to sell my hard work through their store, just for using their software" -> Do you believe this software came out of thin air? They created it, and rather then charging for it, gave people to OPTION produce and distribute works for free. If you CHOOSE to profit from using their free software, they ask for it to be sold though their store so they can make their 30%. Hardly sounds unfair to me. If you want to produce commercial works for multiple platforms, go pay to use professional software, problem solved.

This application has great potential… a nice break from the Adobe stuff. The help sub-application has so many broken links they are too numerous to mention. Lets hope they are fixed soon. Things you cannot do are many, like move pages from one section to another. You have to re-create the content. Create line breaks in titles. It is just bad form to have the top line of a title longer than the second line. Even worse to have a line end in a conjuction or preposition. Cleaning up a template is cumbersome, there is no blank template in the chooser. Need to be able to emulate the book on the computer not just send it to an iPad. And what about other form factors…? Looking forward to updates.

I love this app. Its really nice, easy to use, modern looks and just awesome. I havent used it too much yet, but I have fooled around with it and know I will be using it quite a bit! I do think it could use a few more templates though...

Theres not much to say about LaTeX, as it is not in iBooks Author. Big weakness here, especially because we definitely need a breakthrough in books about mathematics and electricity. Most of them are rather boring at the moment. Please Apple, give us the proper tools needed to build scientific books. At least it is not impossible to get equations and drawings into iBooks Author, what people can do is write an equation in an external application like Grapher or LaTeXiT and copy-paste it into iBooks Author as a PDF. Another major letdown, while the interface is generally good and polished like only Apple would do, the most recent apps today are contained within a single window, with dockable panes inside it, which removes all the clutter from our old user interfaces, and which makes working in full-screen a whole lot easier. I hoped a new app like this would be a single-window. Basically they should put the inspector right in the main window, and make things bigger, because right now theyre very hard to see. No single-window shows where iWork 12 is heading. Meanwhile, native Lion apps, iTunes, iLife, Aperture, Logic Pro, Final Cut Pro X and Motion are the most recent apps from Apple and theyre all single-windowed apps. iWork and iBooks Author are the black sheeps in the herd. Other than these two major let downs, the application is awesome. Ive played with it a bit and seen the demonstration on the Keynote, the workflow and the results are both impressive and incredible. Congratulations, but please fix these two major issues ASAP !

I find that the 3D pictures are not working. Can anyone recomend a program for making them to me? Other than that it is a great app!

I like this program. To add equation, one can choose between MathType from Design Science, "Equation Editor" that bundles with Microsoft Office 2011 or LaTeXiT which comes bundle with MacTeX -- a free LaTeX package for Mac OS X. I hope that moving page(s) between chapters can be made easier but this is nice start for an easy to use and free eBook authoring tool. Nice.

Dear iBook Development Team Thank you for making such an easy to use program to put together Notes/Chapters/Textbooks so Effortlessly ! I am not a Mac user, but I am on a Piolt Team testing iPads at our College, and your iBooks software is going to make my job and my students learning experience a whole lot better. Thanks Rayomand Darukhanawalla IT Instructor

rather use iPad

For those of us who have books out of print, this is a great app. I plan to convert my two books once I get a hang of how this works. Thanks Apple! At first glance, this app seems to do what it is designed for.

Title says it all, why am I forced to use 1 of 6 templates? If there is an option to start from blank I cannot find it because every time I select NEW it takes me to the 6 templates. If we are to be forced to use them, then atleast release a few more options then 6. Otherwise I have no other quams with the app.

Apple has created a winner along the lines of Keynote, Pages and iWeb. But why the builders of this App have failed to provide for an interactive TOC? Imagine an ebook that wont allow you to touch on a chapter or page title in the TOC to take you there! Many Apple discussion group posts have pointed out this flaw. I, too, find the templates too rigid. Landscape format books have a vertical divider down the middle of the lead page of each chapter. Cant get rid of it.

Why cant they allow your book to be available on iPhone/iPod touch devices as well that have iOS 5?