iBooks Author is Apple's attempt at revolutionizing textbooks, cookbooks, history books, picture books, and more for iPad. With it, you can create all of the above and more all via a classically easy to use Apple interface.
To get you started quickly, there are lots of Apple-designed templates that merely require you to add your own text and drag and drop images. To add interactive photo galleries, movies, Keynote presentations, 3D objects and more, there are simple widgets which make things very easy indeed. To check how your book is looking, you can preview it on your iPad at any time although note that you'll need iBooks 2 installed on your iOS device to do this.
The widgets are one of the outstanding features of iBooks Author. They enable you to add everything from a photo gallery to a Keynote (Keynote ’09 v5.1.1 or later) presentation and can be easily identified in your Table of Contents. You can also add a voice-over to make it easier for sight-impaired readers to read your books.
If you don't like the look or layout of your book, you can easily re-arrange it using the Book Navigator including the possibility of adding a cover and table of contents. In addition, you can import a chapter written in Pages or Microsoft Word and automatically create a portrait view of your book which makes it easier for readers to focus on the text.
The final step is to submit your finished work to the iBookstore and hey presto, you're a self-published author. However, be aware that once you've issued it to the iBookstore, the terms and conditions stipulate that you can't sell it elsewhere. The exports are in iBook format but you can also export them as PDF files which any e-reader or tablet can read. Presumably however, any multimedia elements are excluded from PDF files so the result won't be as good as if you publish to the iBookstore. Alternatively, you can just export a pure Text version.
As you'd expect from an Apple application, iBooks Author is a very stylish and easy to use application. If you've ever used Keynote to make a presentation, then you'll feel very at home with iBooks Author.
iBooks Author is a superb iBook authoring package which produces stunning results with relatively little effort.
