Apple iBooks author

[Antonio]

Will see aerospace ibooks soon?

http://www.apple.com/ibooks-author/

Exciting

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

Personally, not until Apple have a software reader for non-Apple platforms. Which they will never provide, as they are a bunch of monopolistic, anti-competitive bastards who get away with behaviour that would see Google or Microsoft hauled up before the courts.

Also iTunes on Windows is a horrendously programmed piece of junk that will never be installed on my PC, so I couldn't buy it even in the unlikely event they produced a Windows iBooks reader.

Aerospace-projects-enthusiasts is a small enough market, aerospace-projects-enthusiasts-with-ipads is going to be too small to bother with.

 

[northerndancer2000]

A potential solution to getting published. (Think of the authors with books to be published at Specialty Press)


However, I like the ability to print a copy of a page with a photocopy. I've also had bad luck with a couple of iBooks books. These were clearly designed for print and issued as iBooks. While it is annoying to have the gutter run down the middle of a photograph or drawing spread across 2 X pages, it is infuriating when the 2 pages are on separate screens.

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

Simply for maximum market, you would have to use Epub or PDF as the base format to reach your readership.

If you can fleece a few Apple owners extra for a minor modification to your PDF version, then I suppose thats good business. Coffee table style "How Planes Work" books, now *that* I can see a market for.

 

[circle-5]

Personally, not until Apple have a software reader for non-Apple platforms. Which they will never provide, as they are a bunch of monopolistic, anti-competitive bastards who get away with behaviour that would see Google or Microsoft hauled up before the courts.

Also iTunes on Windows is a horrendously programmed piece of junk that will never be installed on my PC, so I couldn't buy it even in the unlikely event they produced a Windows iBooks reader.

Aerospace-projects-enthusiasts is a small enough market, aerospace-projects-enthusiasts-with-ipads is going to be too small to bother with.

Isn't the Windows share of the OS market in excess of 85% (with MacOS around 10%)? Not defending Apple, but Microsoft seems to be a lot closer to how a monopoly is typically defined. Also, most of the MacOS code is open-source, unlike Windows. Of course, Linux is free, but is not quite for the average user.

Anyway, it's good to see the Mac vs. PC debate is still alive, clearly with much passion.

 

[Gridlock]

While you do really need to look at what ePub is and why the Microsoft case is different before you criticise Apple for "anti-competitive" behaviour I'd agree iTunes, on mac or windows, is long overdue retirement in its current form.


Luckily it's become irrelevant as a syncing client and we're already in a world where you can own an iOS device without ever having to use iTunes.


I'm going to have a crack at scanning, OCRing and marking up 24 copies of Aeromodeller 1944-1945 I found, which I believe are out of copyright. To release free of course. There's a nice spread on building your own 1/72nd wind tunnel

 

[Hobbes]

Early indications are that the iBooks format is ePub with a custom mime type. It shouldn't be too hard to read these on other platforms.

That said, Apple wants exclusive distribution rights for books you publish via the iBookstore.

 

[Michel Van]

I have Mac, and i consider Apple also as monopolistic, anti-competitive company !
but others like Microsoft, Google/Motorola, Facebook, Amazon, Samsung, Nokia ARE NOT BETTER !!!
there one thing that Apple is vastly superior, to competitor titled above.

they create innovative new product and created new market with it, see the Hype about Iphone and Ipad
now Apple push into Education (First US, later the rest of World : )
and it will create a enormously market for Ibooks also in aerospace !

also push Apple the level of E-book to new high's with Interactive contents
like Videos, audios, CGI models, dictionary or mark text and wright notes on it.
let see how long it take until Googel and Amazon come up with same Interactive contents for Android or Kindle
To ignore this enormously market and innovative Ibook ist almost indictable

but there some serious problems for beginner author on Ibook
like Copyright of the source, Picture, Videos, Audio of thematic you want to publish
and there also Apple general conditions of sale, like Apple guideline and there "RIGHT" to pull app or Ibook from sales.
or Apple "extortion"share of 30% on your ibook sales !
but the competitor are not bit better as Apple...

...because we life in turbo capitalism world :'(

 

[Hobbes]

The initial experiments with reading iBooks on other platforms don't bode well. The content's all there, but the page formatting is screwed up.

 

[Gridlock]

They dont currently use embedded fonts so if the iBook uses a font the device doesn't have installed the formatting will screw up.


Yes apple claims exclusive distribution rights if you SELL your iBook. Not if it's free. If you don't like this, don't use their free authoring tool to produce something you want to sell for a profit...

 

[Orionblamblam]

...because we life in turbo capitalism world :'(

And a good thing, too. While a lot of todays computer-stuff does seem anti-competative... I shudder to imagine what the iComrade ebook reader would have looked like. Probably a foot wide, a foot high, six inches thick, weight 20 pounds with a 3X4 inch screen and a battery life of 20 minutes, using potatoes as a backup power supply, and with a fantastic selection of government-approved literature to read, nearly filling the built-in 1.4 megabytes of storage space.

 

[Grey Havoc]

...because we life in turbo capitalism world :'(

And a good thing, too. While a lot of todays computer-stuff does seem anti-competative... I shudder to imagine what the iComrade ebook reader would have looked like. Probably a foot wide, a foot high, six inches thick, weight 20 pounds with a 3X4 inch screen and a battery life of 20 minutes, using potatoes as a backup power supply, and with a fantastic selection of government-approved literature to read, nearly filling the built-in 1.4 megabytes of storage space.

No, Comrade, that's the special goverment version. For the standard production version 640K is enough for anyone, at least anyone who can get on the waiting list for it.

 

[Arjen]

Be fair, Michel Van is a mac user. I, on the other hand, am a user of that communistical linux-thingy. No capitalist OS for me.

 

[quellish]

Early indications are that the iBooks format is ePub with a custom mime type. It shouldn't be too hard to read these on other platforms.

The "iBooks format" is, and always has been, ePub. Anyone can author a book with any ePub tool and distribute through the iBooks store. The iBooks store applies a version of the FairPlay DRM to books sold through the iBooks store. Any ePub without DRM can be read using iBooks. The iBooks Author format is ePub 3 with some extensions - a superset of ePub.

That said, Apple wants exclusive distribution rights for books you publish via the iBookstore.

No, that's part of the EULA of part of the iBooks Author authoring process. You can author an ePub using another tool, distribute it via the iBooks store, and that licensing restriction does not apply.


There are definitely aerospace books coming to the iBooks store.

 

[Antonio]

Quick tutorial for those writers interested about the new app:

http://gizmodo.com/5877575/how-to-make-an-ipad-textbook-in-under-five-minutes

 

[Hobbes]

The iBooks Author app can only create books to the iBooks standard. This limits its target market to people who have iPads.

This is still the biggest problem with e-readers: the market is fragmented. It's disappointing that Apple has chosen yet another proprietary solution instead of adhering to a standard.

 

[Gridlock]

The iBooks Author app can only create books to the iBooks standard. This limits its target market to people who have iPads.

It can also create (not as rich) PDFs. And (including Kindle Fire but not the e-ink models, which couldn't display this kind of full motion content anyway) when you 'limit' yourself to only iPad users then you are only addressing about 96% of the market...

This is still the biggest problem with e-readers: the market is fragmented. It's disappointing that Apple has chosen yet another proprietary solution instead of adhering to a standard.

Yet another?


And which standard exactly? There isn't one that would allow the kind of thing that Apple wants do. First you innovate, then standards follow.

http://daringfireball.net/2012/01/ibooks_author_file_format


"One man's non-standard is another man's competitive differentiation"

 

[sublight]

Uhm, wait a minute....

"Buried in the iBooks Author software license agreement is a contractual requirement that gives Apple considerable power over content that you create using the software".

http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/productivity_apps/232500227

 

[Arjen]

Be very wary of Apple or Microsoft when they offer their own software for any purpose. Both companies have a long history of promoting their particular 'ecosystem' to the detriment of universal applicability of anything made with Apple or Microsoft products. I am not against the use of OSX, Windows, etc,However, in my experience, Apple and Microsoft launch many products that work best if you don't stray out of their 'ecosystem'. In private computer use, I tend to avoid their products like the plague, and try to use software that's usable on most operating systems. In my professional use of computers, stepping outside the Microsoft-ecosystem has proved to be virtually impossible because each and everyone of my employers are, or were, stuck knee-deep in that part of the IT-world.

 

[TinWing]

Personally, not until Apple have a software reader for non-Apple platforms. Which they will never provide, as they are a bunch of monopolistic, anti-competitive bastards who get away with behaviour that would see Google or Microsoft hauled up before the courts.

Amazon's Kindle platform is the current leader in the ebook market. Microsoft splashed out with the .lit format years ago. Kobo still exists, despite the liquidation of Borders, and B&N's parent company is considering the spin-off the the Nook line. Even the Google ebook platform is somewhat obscure, being tied to the Korean company iRiver. If the Kindle platform has succeeded, it has a lot to do with Amazon's support of Windows and OS readers, Android and iOS, not just their own hardware, some of which is very unimpressive in recent months. All things being equal, B&N had better hardware in late 2011, but Amazon had a much more robust platform for sales.

Apple is a solid #2 contender at the moment. I'm not sure that the iPad is the ideal platform for every genre, but it does have a Kindle app, as well as a massive user base. To the extent that a book features color photography, or large illustrated drawings, it might be well suited to the rumored high resolution display of the upcoming iPad 3. The iPad is probably going to be a very good platform for text books and highly specialised non-fiction works, such as the aviation genre.

Also iTunes on Windows is a horrendously programmed piece of junk that will never be installed on my PC, so I couldn't buy it even in the unlikely event they produced a Windows iBooks reader.

Agreed. I wouldn't even consider using iTunes in Windows, although I can't comment on its efficacy in OS X. Ideally, every iOS device would feature MSC/UMS file transfers, but this isn't the way Apple does things. They've made a lot of money from iTunes, and to be completely impartial, I have to state that I never liked Microsoft's MTP file transfer protocol, either.

Aerospace-projects-enthusiasts is a small enough market, aerospace-projects-enthusiasts-with-ipads is going to be too small to bother with.

I think that when a market is too small, it makes more sense to service it though ebooks than through print publishing. If the iBooks platform manages to overtake Amazon, it will be because of eduction markets, but smaller non-fiction markets will also have to pay attention.

Simply for maximum market, you would have to use Epub or PDF as the base format to reach your readership.

I'm not sure that Adobe Digital Editions is very user friendly compared to Kindle Reader on a PC. I also think that the .pdf format can be downright cumbersome on embedded devices that only have 256MB, 512MB or at most 1GB of RAM.

If you can fleece a few Apple owners extra for a minor modification to your PDF vercompasion, then I suppose thats good business. Coffee table style "How Planes Work" books, now *that* I can see a market for.

I'm not sure it's smart to go exclusively with any particular platform. Even though Apple had to cave in when it came to giving iBooks Author a new EULA, I'm sure that there is a still a degree of wariness stemming from the initial EULA flap.

 

[Stargazer]

Personally, not until Apple have a software reader for non-Apple platforms. Which they will never provide, as they are a bunch of monopolistic, anti-competitive bastards who get away with behaviour that would see Google or Microsoft hauled up before the courts.

So true. How ironical that Apple has now developed a whole gang of proprietary software to be used only on proprietary hardware, considering how Microsoft was under attack a decade ago for being monopolistic...

 

[quellish]

Personally, not until Apple have a software reader for non-Apple platforms. Which they will never provide, as they are a bunch of monopolistic, anti-competitive bastards who get away with behaviour that would see Google or Microsoft hauled up before the courts.

So true. How ironical that Apple has now developed a whole gang of proprietary software to be used only on proprietary hardware, considering how Microsoft was under attack a decade ago for being monopolistic...

The Microsoft anti trust case centered around Microsoft leveraging their position in operating systems to prevent competition in (specifically) web browsers. By making Internet Explorer a non-removable part of the operating system they were artificially creating a high barrier to entry to any third party browser (Netscape, etc.).
At the time, Microsoft was doing FAR worse things with their OEMs. The MS license agreements with some of these OEMs (companies that built or sold PCs with Microsoft operating systems preinstalled, etc.) made it pretty much impossible to offer other operating systems as a choice.
http://www.webcitation.org/query?id=1298667420478086

Creating proprietary systems is not itself a violation of US anti trust law. In fact, it's encouraged - innovative systems are often by their nature proprietary, to protect those innovations. There are US laws that are designed to protect innovation, to foster its growth in the marketplace. What is against US law is using your position in one market to artificially destroy competition in another (what Microsoft was accused of).

Right now Apple is a minor player in the desktop, laptop, and even mobile markets. If you look at the % market share (by handsets) of iPhone models vs. Android, it's not very impressive. Android, though, is not single entity - it's a number of different manufacturers, different OS versions, etc. In that context, Apple is one of the larger handset manufacturers for "smartphones". Essentially the same holds true for the desktop. MacOS marketshare is still very low compared to other operating systems. But since Apple makes the hardware, they're actually one of the larger desktop manufacturers.
Because of that, it's hard to say that Apple acts as a monopoly. They don't have a dominant market position to abuse, at least not in business terms. But they are VERY influential. The back and forth in this thread is evidence enough of that!

In the case of digital books, authors and publishers are free to choose what they publish, how they publish it, and what prices to charge. I've looked at the economics of publishing digital books from several angles, and for the things I want to do, iBooks makes the most sense in terms of both features and money. The money gets a little more complicated because of the ISBN requirements, but I can deal with that easily enough. I very much wanted to make things available through the Kindle store as well, but for various reasons that does not look like it will happen. I am taking advantage of some of the advanced functionality that is available in iBooks but not in other formats (yet). When some of those capabilities are available, I can look at publishing to other formats. A PDF version that does not have some of those features (which, frankly, will kind of suck), is a possibility. For the things I am doing, digital publishing at all didn't make much sense until these features were available. That's certainly not the case for everyone.

Not everyone needs a 3D, anaglyph stereo interactive walkthrough of the YF-23 inlet; or a almost-live satellite view of a remote location. But to tell a certain story, it does help.