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Apple Unveils Software To Reinvent the Textbook
redletterdave writes "At the Guggenheim Museum in New York, Apple announced on Thursday it would update its iBooks platform to include textbook capabilities and also added a new platform called iBooks Author, which lets anyone easily create and publish their own e-books. Apple's senior VP of marketing, Phil Schiller, introduced iBooks 2, which has a new textbook experience for the iPad. The books themselves display larger images, and searching content is made significantly easier: all users need to do is tap on a word and they are taken straight to an appropriate glossary or index section in the back of the book. Navigating pages and searching is also easy and fluid, and at the end of each chapter is a full review with questions and pictures. If you want the answers to the questions, all you need to do is tap the question to get instant feedback. Apple also launched the iBooks Author app, which lets anyone easily create any kind of textbook and publish it to the iBookstore, and the new iTunes U platform, which helps teachers and students communicate better, and even send each other materials and notes created with iBooks Author. All of the apps are free, and available for any and all students, from K-12 to major universities."
Apparently you missed the memo, whenever Apple enters a market they reinvent it. Doesn't matter if they're just refining what other people have already done.
In this case they're hardly the first to enter the etextbook market. B&N has had etextbooks for a while now. Granted they probably aren't quite as sophisticated, but it's not like Apple is the first to hop on this possible trend.
Be sure to read the License.pdf before you put any time into iBook Author. The Apple Overlawyers have done a doozy.
Simply put if the Work isn't going to be free then it must only be distributed through Apple. You will need an apple contract. You will need some luck because your Work will have to be approved by Apple as well just like an app. If Apple chooses to censor your Work you do not have any way to send your completed work to any other distributor. You will then be forced to recreate your work in another ebook creator.
If you are a non established writer, you owe it to yourself to use any tool other than iBook Author. Perhaps even if you are an established writer.
It could be a good tool if the Overlawyers release their grip some.
Mod this way up. This is a major deal breaker. This should infact be illegal, just because you used their free tool to make the final product does not give them exclusivity on YOUR work.
This is so unethical it's scary.
The whole concept of price capping these books at a low level, putting a text book in the same price range as a fiction novel (I don't believe fiction is price capped, and certainly apps aren't) is insane and downright offensive. Also the exclusivity requirements should be downright illegal.