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1. Re: Apple iBooks Author is not a print production tool…
cgrscott Jan 19, 2012 10:44 PM (in response to cgrscott)It looks like Adobe's Digital Publishing Suite forum already has a redemptive discussion going on about iBooks Author.
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2. Re: Apple iBooks Author is not a print production tool…
Stix Hart Jan 20, 2012 1:02 AM (in response to cgrscott)There is a term used here in N.Z.: "No Sh*t Sherlock". Sorry I'm not meaning to pour scorn on your observation...
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3. Re: Apple iBooks Author is not a print production tool…
Eugene Tyson Jan 20, 2012 1:29 AM (in response to Stix Hart)Maybe obvious to the professional printers, but not so much to people looking for advice. I often get asked the question "Should I do my brochure in Photoshop?" And it hurts my ears every time, but some people just don't know any better.
Some come here looking for advice, and it's true what the OP said.
I have yet to try this out yet. It could be interesting.
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4. Re: Apple iBooks Author is not a print production tool…
BobLevine Jan 20, 2012 5:11 AM (in response to cgrscott)FYI, it can be installed on Snow Leopard. I did it here using the tips on this site: http://bit.ly/zMcv08
It’s translated from French but it’s clear enough.
Bob
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5. Re: Apple iBooks Author is not a print production tool…
P Spier Jan 20, 2012 9:45 AM (in response to cgrscott)One thing not mentioned here so far is that apparently the licensing resticts you to free distribution anywhere, or pid distribution only through the apple store (and only for iPad), with no guarantee that apple will accept the work for distribution. If they don't, you'd be faced with having to recreate the book in another application to try to sell it elsewhere.
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6. Re: Apple iBooks Author is not a print production tool…
cgrscott Jan 20, 2012 9:57 AM (in response to P Spier)Thanks for your good point. Your facts provide good reason to conintue to build eBooks with InDesign.
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7. Re: Apple iBooks Author is not a print production tool…
cgrscott Jan 30, 2012 6:47 AM (in response to Stix Hart)In the past, I have been a heckler, like you, but I have learned my lesson some years go. I don't care what your intent is. You are making abusive comments and you will be ignored.
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8. Re: Apple iBooks Author is not a print production tool…
cgrscott Jan 30, 2012 6:53 AM (in response to BobLevine)Thanks for your help on getting iBooks Author to run in Snow Leopard. It turns out that my biggest publishing customer wants me to produce a content for the restricted iPad-iBooks-ecosystem so, being able to use this app in Snow Leopard, instead of Lion, is a huge help.
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9. Re: Apple iBooks Author is not a print production tool…
cgrscott Jan 30, 2012 7:38 AM (in response to cgrscott)This was a good introduction, showing how InDesign can be your path to media rich eBooks for the iPad.
iBooks Author is not the only path probably not the preferred one.
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10. Re: Apple iBooks Author is not a print production tool…
[Jongware] Jan 30, 2012 8:17 AM (in response to cgrscott)iBooks Author has extremely little to do with InDesign. You cannot create the thusly enhanced iBooks with ID, and (as far as I can see) you cannot import existing epubs, or even plain or formatted text, into it.
It's a completely different platform.
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11. Re: Apple iBooks Author is not a print production tool…
cgrscott Jan 30, 2012 8:35 AM (in response to [Jongware])Agreed. My one friend, who is a desktop publisher and web designer, said that iBooks Author seemed like a simple and limited version of an ePublishing Tool and it compares to InDesign they same way iLife's iWeb compares to Adobe Dreamweaver. It sounds like iBooks Author is not as sophisticated as InDesign and, like you said, very limiting.
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12. Re: Apple iBooks Author is not a print production tool…
macinbytes Jan 30, 2012 12:17 PM (in response to cgrscott)iWeb is template based and Dreamweaver is a WYSIWYG graphical web editor. iWeb is the fry cook of the web world with Dreamweaver the fast food middle manager of the web world. In most cases you aren't going to get haute cuisine out of Dreamweaver, that's where your IDE's and scripting languages shine.
iBooks author is essential the same thing as Microsoft Publisher, but built exclusively for getting content into Apple's iBooks2 and iTunes U applications. One can build a bunch of equity in Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint, PDF, images and spit them into Publisher or iBooks Author with minimum reformatting and maintain the magic that those applications have.
InDesign allows you to leverage graphical equity from existing print layouts and publish to a few more output directions. Getting existing Powerpoints, Excel documents, Word Documents misused as layouts and the like is not something one can easily accomplish in InDesign. You can get your InDesign documents wrapped into Adobe's viewer and push out to Android, iOS and other platforms provided you pay Adobe either a grip of cash or a small amount of cash every time you want the document updated.
For the everyday student, professor, office worker or anybody who doesn't already have a strong investment in Adobe and InDesign it is a no brainer to go the iBooks Author route. Apple's iPad and iOS have a commanding lead in marketshare and a staggering lead in revenue spent on content per device. Many people aren't putting effort forth on Android or other devices still (though the Kindle Fire may change that). For the purpose of taking something that is free, publishing for free to the over 40 million devices out there iBooks is a much more attractive route for many than Zinio, Woodwing, DPS, paying a developer.
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13. Re: Apple iBooks Author is not a print production tool…
conyip Feb 25, 2012 8:33 AM (in response to cgrscott)The problem with traditional publishing and ebook publishing is that its like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, ebook publishing is not the multi channel output that everyone thinks it is, yes for text heavy documents that are produced in print, do transfer well to the epub format but try and take a graphic heavy document to epub and it wont work. Ibook author tries to shave the corners off the square peg (its not like indesign and it never will be like indesign, however indesign's route to epub isnt as easy as clicking "export to epub", if you want to create properly structured ebooks.) Yes there are huge draw backs to using such a tool (its from apple and its free, so they are bound to want to make some money through the tool being used(i.e.distribution channel), its like livecycle designer bundled free with acrobat professional, Adobe want you to use the tool but if really want to publish your interactive XML forms in a production enviroment then you need to purchase their server product for thousands of dollars! I think that there is though a market for someone to create a tool that targets the heavy graphic documents and with a few clicks can create high quality multi-touch ebook experiences for all device platforms, without the depth of scripting that corona SDK requires.




