I spent a lot of time and a moderate amount of money investigating ways to publish a book readable by iBooks. I tried to consider many possible alternatives from exporting word processor files as pdf or epub formatted files to using free and online publication applications to paid iPad apps all the way up to iBooks Author on the Mac.
Converting from Pages sounded so simple and elegant, but formatting and pictures wound up going wacky in the conversion. I loved the ease and features of iBooks Author, but I wanted the students to be able to do all their work on their iPads since we were rolling out one-to-one iPads for all students this past fall. Book Creator was a simple interface and very easy to use, but I didn't think it had the text formatting flexibility the students would need for this fairly involved project. I really liked PressBooks as a free, online app, but some of its features didn't work well on the iPad.
As so often happens, it appeared that there were no real solutions, only trade-offs. (A bit more detailed analysis is at the end of this blog.)
Once the students had gotten over the initial learning curve with the app, things went fairly smoothly for them to build their iBook chapter from their first quarter research. At the end of the second quarter of the course, I had two student editors take over publication. Their job was to collect all of the epub files their classmates had produced and combine them into one unified book. Of course, here at the end was where we learned (or relearned) our final lessons.
1. Students are creative and innovative. Since a fair bit of their grade was based on how attention grabbing their writing and presentation was, some of them wanted full control over the layout of their pages. This is not possible in a classic epub because of the reader's ability to change font sizes. It is, however, possible in a variation of the epub called a fixed layout epub. No problem, I thought. Creative Book Builder handles both formats, so the students should be able to have it all.
What we discovered during the final editing process was that one cannot combine fixed layout chapters and classic epub chapters into one book in Creative Book Builder. There may have been other solutions, but we wound up exporting the fixed layout chapters to pdf fomat and working with them that way.
So much for having everything in Creative Book Builder and easily combining chapters which was one of the main reasons for using the app.
2. I thought it was important to have additional features available for the students like adding in quizzes, video, audio, etc.. However, it seemed like students doing this for the first time are going to be thinking definitely inside the content box. So... I would tentatively conclude one of two things. Either I really need to emphasize using these features by rewarding their use in the grading rubric and budgeting much more classroom time for them to learn to use them, or I don't need to select my publishing tool based on their presence.
3. Finally, unless there is reason to think that the audience for the book will really use the notation and highlighting features of iBooks OR the book produced really needs the interactive parts of a full featured epub (or iBook), one might be just as well off using Adobe Acrobat to combine student pdf files into one book.
The individual pdf files could then be created in the tool of the student's choice: Pages, Word, Book Creator, Keynote, or any program that will output as a pdf file. The possible apps list is huge. The process would also be much simpler at the end since more students know how to use pdfs. The one drawback for us is that we would likely have to export to a desktop computer to do the compilation. I've not yet found an easy app on the iPad for that - though it may well be out there for write-up in a future blog.
At any rate, after all the epub and iPad fuss, I'm seriously thinking about moving back to pdf format for this coming semester. Ah, well. I guess that's what a pilot is all about. There are still specific reasons I might want to upgrade back to epub or iBooks in the classroom, but the present form of the finance project doesn't call for that, and there are simpler alternatives.
I wouldn't presume to choose which tool would work best for your particular project, but, for what it is worth, here is the nutshell summary of what I explored last summer, and I'm guessing there are more apps out there, now. If you've found something great, please share!
Happy Publishing!
My Digital Publishing Explorations
All have same basic functions… export iBooks, ePub, and usually PDF. Basic text formatting, add photos, video, audio. There are also quite a few photo album/scrapbook apps that do allow PDF export. Watch out, though. Most really downsize your photos on adding (like ScrapIt, Skrappy, and unfortunately all the ones with really cool scrapbook tools) so the print quality is lousy. I'm beta testing for Photo Album, and they're trying to correct this, but the PDFs wind up a lot bigger. For onscreen viewing, though, they're good, and will generally export to photo roll, too.
iBooks Author $0.00 The ultimate in interactive widgets and great user and reader features. Easy to use -- Of course, VERY Apple. :) Requires Macs to work with. All the bells and whistles as long as you're happy with their templates. http://www.apple.com/ibooks-author/
Book Creator $4.99 Great user interface. Easy, intuitive manipulation (2 finger twists to rotate, etc.) Fixed layout books ONLY. Exports nicely to PDF. Text manipulation is VERY basic. No interactive widgets. To me, this was mostly a picture book with attached video and audio. Fine for what it is and really easy to use for simple layouts. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/book-creator-for-ipad/id442378070?mt=8
Creative Book Builder $3.99 On iPad! Allows fixed and classic (flowing text) formats, addition of HTML and markup as well as LOTS of different kinds of add-ins. Documents, video, charts, quizzes, equations, and all kinds of things. Nice previews of PDF and ePub forms, lots of ways to access files to add, lots of ways to export and publish. Standard ePub which reads on multiple platforms. User interface isn't as easy as Book Creator, but it is fine, and it does a LOT more. You don't have a few of the widget types in iBooks Author (3D, interactive graphics, popovers, HTML5 widgets, we think).It offers quite a bit, though not all the interactive iBooks stuff. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/creative-book-builder/id451041428?mt=8
eBook Magic $4.99 Don't know if this is user error, but I really couldn't make this one work at all. No response from their customer service. Too bad, because it looked good on the description. If anyone figures it out, tell me. :P https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ebook-magic+-epub-pdf-photo/id424877762?mt=8
Writer's Studio $4.99 Simple interface for ePub production. I wasn't impressed with the layout tools, and you can't see the boundaries of a page. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/writers-studio/id371303544?mt=8
PressBooks: http://pressbooks.com/ A purely online eBook creator - a spin off of the popular blog service WordPress. Medium rich feature set. Can add in photos, movies, audio, but there are strict limits on sizes and kinds of files. Nice, easy to use user interface. Easier to rearrange content sections than in Creative Book Builder. I really like this tool! The only drawback besides the lack of interactive elements that I've found is that PressBooks doesn't play that well with iOS Safari. Safari's interaction with PressBook's rich text editor is wierd, so some editing functions are a bit hit or miss. This is the tool I used to build my eBooks Publishing Guide, and I'm definitely going to use it again for other projects.
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