Tag: ibooks

Tomorrow I am presenting at the Exploratorium for the NYCDOE School Library Services’ Spring conference.

I have learned so much more about iBooks Author since I wrote up the conference materials that I thought I would do an update here.

iBooks Author is very robust. It requires you to design in portrait and landscape. Portrait is meant for a reader-like experience, which is not the best way to read a picture book. I am torn whether or not to have the pictures “inline” with the text and thus appear. If iTunes Connect does not approve my book, the next step is to take the pictures out of portrait view.

My first error was that I had a stray text box in portrait view. I highly recommend the ebook “Publishing with iBooks Author” published at the awesome O’Reilly Press. I easily downloaded it to my iPad and it helped me a lot. The only question it did not address was how to create thumbnails of the videos in portrait. That is my goal. There is not a lot of support available out there since iBooks Author is so new.

But if you want to share ebooks on the iPad environment, start with Book Creator for iPad for audio books, and Scribble Press for handmade digital books. They are super easy to use and a lot of fun for kids.