Apple’s new iBooks Author Mac application is now live on the Mac App Store, enabling authors and those interested in publishing their own interactive books to create and submit their works to the iBookstore.
Apple wants anyone to create “stunning iBooks textbooks, cookbooks, history books, picture books, and more for iPad,” providing them with a tool that allows the user to create a book from one of Apple’s own templates or start with a blank slate.
iBooks Author is a WYSIWG (what you see if what you get) editor, giving the user the option to add their own text and images with “drag-and-drop ease”. Different tools can embed interactive photo galleries, movies, Keynote presentations, 3D objects and even HTML5 content.
iBook Author supports the importing of Pages or Microsoft Word content, adding words to the glossary with a single click. On top of this, there are multi-touch widgets which add interactivity to books, serving to deliver rich content or placeholders fot titles and captions, which are automatically numbered so they can be referenced in the body of the text.
Once finished, the book can be previewed to see what it looks like on an iPad, allowing users to add a cover, video intro, dedication or foreword. If it’s ready to go, the book can be submitted to the iBookstore with a few clicks.
If you don’t want to sell your work, you can export it and simply share with friends and family, perfect for family events or to gain feedback. iTunes Author supports PDF export too, for easy sharing.
Check out all of our posts from today’s Apple Education event here.
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