iBooks Author makes its debut today for creating ebooks (Updated)

I've played with it since the launch until now, and I can only say Wow!
To my opinion, IBA has a much broader usage then only creating books. Business plans, reports, presentations and many more, it just looks great!
Therefore, I hope others see these applications too, so new templates for these uses can also be integrated, as well as the creation of widgets for these purposes.
When a preview-client could be added to MacOS, the content could even be shown on your laptop/iMac. If this would be the case, I would probably prefer IBA over Keynote/PPT and Pages/Word.

iBooks Author is Lion only? I didn't know writers were so wealthy.

Hi, I am honored this morning (South Korean time) to join this site. I also thank you for allowing me to have a say about the situation surrounding the errors-laden local edition of Steve Jobs.

I am ashamed to say this, but I know I have to say this. Snitch might be the right word for this occasion. Or, the sense of obligation of some sort might have prompted to do this. In brief, I am forced to report to the smart folks of the United States, the intelligent folks in the global populace included.

I am an old man of 71 from Seoul. I am going to report on things Korean, particularly on the capability of the transmission of the cultural contents abroad, mainly those of the U.S. included, by the local members. In a nutshell, the transmission rating has been so low, for which I am deeply upset about, and making efforts of some sort. In this case, 'transmission' I mean translations of the foreign knowlege materials, that is, the books of various categories.

Let me get down to the main point. At this time of jubilation in which every one of you is celebrating the successful launch of the major U.S. major technology system, say, Apple's launch of iBooks, I am forced to report on the grim condition and situation where the great biography of the great architect of the coveted technologies, the late Steve Jobs, has been warped, distorted, and framed up, to a shameful fault.

The main cause of the messup constitutes a wide spectrum of errors ranging from flagrant frog-jumps, too oft-repeated transliterations, and ubiquitous lies. Frog-jumps in this case I mean the omissions by the translator himself. He has more often than not made it a rule to omit major modifiers in specific statements of paragraphs, by which the translator has turned out to be a major impediment to the conveyance of the true meanings for the local audience.

The technical cause leading to the interpretational disaster might come from the subdivision of the original text. Probably cornered by the deadline timed with the publication of the biography in the U.S., the local publisher and/or its translator must have subdivided the original text components (chapter) into various persons of disaparate capabilities, from which the unspeakable interpretational errors have ensued. For example, one of the translators of the bio has taken the "blindness in Nepal" to mean to the effect "the illiteracy in Nepal."

I think Min Um Sa and its publisher Mr. Ahn somebody should take serious responsibilities for the cultural blunder, apologizing to the original writer Mr. Walter Isaacson and his publisher, apologizing of course to the local audience, and lastly make some reparation efforts, including the overall corrections of the local version and delivering the revised books to the local audience. I think it's time the tardy practice of the local publishing houses, which have been inured and immune to their mistakes, should be rectified, and also the practiced attitudes too tolerant of the translation mistakes, saying among themselves, "Translation is another creation," giggling and giggling.

Kaboom!

That's the sound of a whole “forest of trees falling” and we’d better be listening. Apple's iBooks Author (and iBooks2, iTunesU App) just blew-up another $10B industry, a great thing in my opinion!

I have been playing with the iBooks Author app all day (and night) and compared to all my other efforts to date; I can hardly believe that Adobe has ignored creating this toolset for HTML5 publishing to iPub3, Good Grief, it is truly transcendent!

What an incredible move by Apple and to repurpose freaking "Keynote"" as an interactive content creation animation tool -- brilliant! NOTE: Call the guys at www.tumultco.com and get Hype to export .wdgt files.

Now granted, It’s web standards that are locked into iBooks2 and likely hard to hack apart, but I’m growing to love my benevolent dictator Apple!

If you look at the entire ecosystem from creation to invention through to distribution its simply unlike anything that has come before it. Apple is replicating their wild success with the same platform model that indie game designers have benefited from.

I think what makes everything “new” is that the iPad is to printeractive publishing what the laserwriter was to desktop publishing. Past attempts floundered not because of computing, content, whiz-bang, or desire, but because in the end there was no “lean-back” portable experience for enjoying those "books".

Apple is simply, always, out in front and if you stop to really consider that the iPhone (and the whole shiny, colorful, touchy, ideal of personal commuting) is only 5 years old, what in the world awaits my first class of graduates from wDd 4 years from now?

The inclusion of their “dashcode” widgets (based web standards, but with a heavy reliance on javascript) paves the way to replicate and surpass the type of tools that the InDesign based AdobeDPS and Mag+ InDesign tools are struggling to make interesting, simple, or affordable.

Not only are there now tremendous opportunities for transforming the way I teach and reach my own students but make no mistake, “textbooks” are only the beginning of a printeractive revolution in publishing. I can only imagine the “magazines” that my creative, tenacious, and curious design and journalism students could make with these “FREE” and almost too easy tools! There has (perhaps) never been a better time to be an indie writer/publisher/photographer/designer.

I posted an old out of print essay to my classroom site that is as prescient and inspiring today as it was when first written in 1926 http://www.iheartcd.com/ourbook/

For everyone who was as disappointed as me when it became clear that iBooks Author is officially Lion-only: I got it to run on my Mac with OS X 10.6.8, only required a little modification inside the .app bundle.

In iBooks Author.app/Contents/Info.plist, I changed the the "LSMinimumSystemVersion" key's value to 10.6.8, after that it launched without any errors. I was able to create a new document and export/publish it in the .ibook format. Wasn't able to test the "iPad preview" feature yet since I don't have an iPad (yet).

Apple is moving, again, to control just another area of digital content. In addition, it gave us a tool to write/create and then publish it through them. Glad I own AAPL. Heck, one day kids won't over go off to college anymore- they'll go to iTunes U instead. Like that too!

2 things: 1) I wish there was an iBooks-reading app for the desktop. 2) I'm disappointed at how quickly Apple is dropping support for 10.6.

I see so much potential for this app. I'm a little confused, though. It's being reported as a way to make text books. On the Mac App Store, it says text books, cookbooks, picture books, etc. So my question is, can ANYONE use this? Is it limited to "education" or can you make children's books, etc.

Finally, I find it limiting that this will only allow you to make a book ONLY for the iPad. While that's cool and all, there is a GREATER market for iPhones. I wonder if they will update this program to be able to make a universal book for all iOS devices.

I find it hilarious that people are expressing so much concern over self published text books. Have any of you spent a quarter in college? If not college how about recent high school attendance. Teachers and professors often use self published materials in teaching their charges. The reasoning isn't as simplistic as many make out to be in this thread.

Some of the reasons include outdated materials, budget constraints or the desire to focus on something outside the main text for a course. Oh those big publishing houses often publish texts full of error, half truths and omissions that many teachers take issue with. At the high school level though budgets are a big issue, as such movements are afoot to bypass the big publishing houses with more cost effective content. The second biggest factor to consider is that content is rapidly outdated these days especially for technical texts.

Another aspect of self publishing is simply finding a publisher that wants to deal with the less mainstream subjects. Once you get past high volume texts, the number of publishers willing to print a work decreases rapidly. This leads writers having to negotiate with someone that holds all the cards so to speak. In the end self publishing will be a financial boon for many authors as the middleman can effectively be removed from the equation.

As to the Texas Board of Education, folks they are not the only ones concerned about bias being built into text books. When you have people trying to rewrite history it is just as bad if it is the board of educations or if it is some commie leftist pinko in Massachusetts. Nether serve the needs of the student well.