Apple unveiled iBooks Author this morning, a free app that will help writers make eBooks and publish to the iBookstore. Writers can download the app Mac App Store right now.
UPDATE: Dan Wineman has noticed some sticky legal issues buried in the user agreement for the free app. Read his post before you use the tool to upload your work to the iBookstore.
Here are a few highlights from the App Store description of the app: 1. “Import a chapter written in Pages or Microsoft Word.”
2. “Add any word to the glossary with a single click and easily include photos, images, charts, tables, and shapes next to any definition.”
3. “Choose from a variety of widgets that add Multi-Touch interactivity to your book.”
4. “Add a photo gallery, chapter review, movie, Keynote presentation, interactive image with callouts, 3D object, or custom HTML anywhere in your book.”
5. “Add accessibility descriptions to any widget so that it can be used by sight-impaired readers easily with VoiceOver.”
We also followed along with the announcement through live blogs this morning.
According to Peter Kafka, the program can create any kind of book, but will be “focused most of all” on building textbooks. The new program will import a Word or Keynote document, allowing you to create an eBook.
At Mashable, Lance Ulanoff explained how it worked: “Drag a Word file into the app, it looks at style and scans it for how to create sections and headers and lays out the book … Drag images in, resize on the fly and you’ve created an interactive image gallery. Always WYSIWYG.”
Apple also introduced a new line of interactive textbooks. eBookNewser has more