Apple Clarifies iBooks Author EULA, Excludes Claim on Content, article.
Perhaps as a reaction to widespread criticism and even anger, Apple has changed the terms which come with their new free software iBooks Author. Previously it appeared that you could only take money for content created with it if you sell through Apple's iBooks store and accept their 30% commision. But the new wording says that this restriction only applies to works in Apple's iBooks format, which is a whole 'nuther picture.
Unfortunately it seems that at the moment the only other formats IA will export are pure text and PDF. Hardly a wealth of options when considering the wealth of multimedia content you can stuff in such a book in iBooks format. Let's hope Apple lets it grow and let it output to more formats, like ePub 3.
6 comments:
I wonder when (if?) they will make a Win version.
My gut feeling says no. They almost never do, except iTunes, which was necessary to sell iPods. Other software they want to be selling points for Macs. It's said that their main profits are on the hardware.
Of course this is slightly different, since this one more or less only produces stuff which can be sold in the iBooks store.
although Macs are popular with writers, I think they could increase the input by ten times if they did a Win version. It's mostly the store integration what interests me-- PagePlus (from Serif) is an excellent piece of software and can save both in epub and mobi/kindle.
I have given a look at Mac emulators on Windows but there seem to be none working with the latest Mac cat (I think it's Lion now ).
Hmm I cut out a sentence. I meant that one can generate rich epubs with Win-only software like PagePlus but that lacks the store integration.
Yeah. Apple has made some outstanding products with the integrated and Exclusive policies, but it definitely comes at a high price culturally.
Since Apple has a culture built on focus which means saying No to most of your options to do a better job on a few things, a Windows version seems unlikely in the next 12 months. I would instead expect possibly an iPad version of iBooks Author. That's likely and it would then be cross platform. This makes so much sense since you need the iPad for development and for reading the output. Also, I think they must figure a way to support the iPhone. I'm liking the rumors of a 7" iPad I hear now and then. That would also need to be supported.
Post a Comment