Okay, you’ve written your ebook and gathered up the illustrations for it. Perhaps you’ve even had a designer create a cover for it. But having your material in a Microsoft Word file is not enough. You need to actually put together your book in a format that people can read.
The process of doing so is called compiling and a piece of software that does this is called a compiler. There are many options to choose from, but first, what exactly does a compiler do?
In the old days, a compiler would convert HTML files or text pages into an ebook. The ebook was basically an executable file, or a self running software program that displayed the contents of the book. Generally, it was readable on Windows only.
Today, the options of narrowed considerably. Because of the popularity of the Mac, tablets, mobile phones and other devices, ebooks that will run only on the Windows operating system just won’t cut it.
There used to be a large number of ebook compilers from which to choose, each with glowing sales copy and incompatible formats. However, the popularity and universality of the PDF format has rendered most of these products obsolete.
Recently, Apple introduced Its iBooks Author, a software program for the Mac that creates ebooks exclusively in the iPad format. While aimed primarily at textbook authors, the software can be used for a wide variety of educational and instructional materials. Best of all is the price: free!
Is iBooks Author for you? There are a few things to consider:
1. How did you create your text? IBooks Author can import Microsoft Word and Apple Pages documents. Of course, you can always use the copy and paste method too.
2. How easy is a software to use? IBooks Author has an attractive interface with thorough online help. Since the software is free and runs on any Mac with OS X Lion installed, there is no reason not to download it and play around with it to see if it suits your needs. You can get it from the Mac App Store.
3. Security options. If you plan to sell your ebook, you may want to implement a few security features. These can include preventing readers from modifying the text, adding notes, copying from the document or even printing the document. Adobe Acrobat offers all these features along with strong encryption. In iBooks Author, you can also set a password. Open the document Inspector, click Document and select “Require password to open” at the bottom of the Document pane. You can enter a password hint to help you remember the password that you set.
4. Support for scripting. This allows you to create special effects. For example, iBooks Author as the ability to embed graphics, videos, interactive widgets and even 3-D models.
5. Pricing. Creating a PDF format ebook used to be expensive. After all, you needed a full copy of Adobe Acrobat to do so. Today, any Mac application, including Apple’s Pages, can create a PDF file. You need invest in Adobe Acrobat only if you want some of the higher-end features, such as advanced security options (as noted, IBooks Author is free).
6.Distribution. Will your ebook be distributed for use on Macs, PCs, iPads or other tablets? In the first two cases, a PDF file may be your best bet (PDFs are viewable on iPads and other tablets too, of course, but IBooks Author can allow additional features. However. You should note that the documents it creates are readable only on the iPad.
7. Licensing. ebooks created with IBooks Author can be distributed anywhere as long as they are free. If you wish to charge for them however, they must be uploaded to the iBook store. Some will gripe about this, but the software is, after all, free. If you do not wish to upload your ebook to the iBook store, you should create in another application, such as Apple’s Pages. Then you can sell it anywhere you like.
The reasons ebook authors have used third-party compilers for creation of their ebooks has been security. They do not want unauthorized persons to modify the contents and then redistribute their ebook. The popularity of the PDF format, however, with its many security features, rendered most of these programs superfluous.
How you get data into your ebook is another issue. Adobe Acrobat works with the print driver allowing you to create a PDF from your favorite application. iBooks Author allows you to work with Microsoft Word documents, Pages documents, text files and so on.
The file size of the documents you create may also be an issue. Adobe Acrobat has handy compression features built-in. Since iBooks Author can work with media files, such as audio and video, the size of the ebook it creates can become rather large. To minimize file size in iBooks Author, you can insert 420p movies rather than 720p movies such as those commonly viewed on iPad, iPhone 4 and Apple TV.
Which option you choose will also depend on your system software. Most any Mac application can create PDF files through the print command. The full version of Adobe Acrobat, however, allows for added features. IBooks Author requires Macs running OS X Lion, since it is available only through the Mac App Store.
Whether you create your ebook as a PDF or in iBooks Author will depend on whether you are circulating it exclusively to iPads, whether you are agreeable to Apple’s terms of service in selling your creations only through the Apple Store and, last but not least, whether Apple will accept your ebook in the store.
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