C.Y. Reid

In Favour of iBook Author

This post is about something that irritates the living hell out of me, almost as much as people who see ebooks as a bad and terrible thing, despite the fact that they have got so many people reading who wouldn’t normally read.

It’s called iBook Author, and some people don’t like it.

At first, it was pure, unbridled stupidity, relentless in its ignorance. “What? We can’t publish the iBooks we used Apple’s software to make anywhere else? Oh, god! No! Our copyright!”

No. No, no, no.

Your book - and I said this before all the astonishing genius put forth by those who actually used their common sense appeared - is not in danger. You can simply re-format it for Kindle, or Nook, or whatever platform you’re intending to publish it on. Apple don’t want your goddamn prose, they just want you to give them exclusivity to the awesome thing you made using the software they gave you for free.

The worst part is that there are inevitably a bunch of people whining and complaining that they can’t take their amazing iBook Author layout and publish it elsewhere. Let me explain to you why this is an incredibly short-sighted, bizarre, lazy, archaic approach is all of the things I just said:

  • You’re failing to embrace a viable format. By simply ignoring iBooks because you’re going to have to format your book again for Kindle and other ereaders, you’re missing out on a huge potential market. the iPad 3 will hopefully hit shelves in March, and this combined with the big push for iBooks and, of course, significant iPad user numbers, means you’re stopping yourself from tapping a market that could help you, as a writer. Take advantage of the massive amount of writers who won’t make use of this opportunity.
  • It’s free. No, really. iBook Author is free software. If you own a Mac, and can access the App Store, you can download it and use it for free. You don’t pay Apple for any new features, or updates (thus far). Your cost is simply your time, and if you can balance a new market and a potential to take books to another level of interactivity against an ongoing formatting project (time-dependent, of course), then download and use it. Apple’s only repayment is your exclusivity to them in terms of your finished iBook. That sounds fair, to me.
  • You are not losing your work to Apple. What is wrong with people? Did you seriously think, off the bat, that this is something Apple would gamble with? Taking Amazon’s reach and market share into account, this sounds even more stupid than it did before. You keep your goddamn prose, you’re just allowing them to be the only person to sell the iBook file! What other platform were you planning to run an ebook with widgets and HTML5 on, your wristwatch?
  • You are a writer. Stop being a lazy one. Oh, no, another new format? Cry me a river, seriously. You’re willing to go through the rigmarole of self-publishing just to cop out because this format offered you the opportunity to create a one-off, cool version of your book for people who want to use their iPad to explore literature in new ways? Come on. You’ve done the hard work! The novel is done! Now make it look incredibly cool! Sure it’s a shame that you can’t do this on the Kindle, but is that Apple’s fault, or the Kindle’s? Alternatively, why not make a PDF of the same quality in Microsoft Wo-oh wait, you can’t. No, that’d be InDesign. Software that will cost you hundreds of money-bits. This is free. FREE.

I think what irritates me the most is the majority of people who would reject this change wouldn’t walk away from Amazon’s market should Amazon say “hey, Kindle formatting software for you! Free! But we get exclusivity on the file you create with it!” In addition, the sort of people who refuse any sort of ebook format altogether and commit themselves to paper books. you’re free to do that, but some of you have a weird habit of calling ereaders and ebooks terrible, and not real, and all this other weird stuff that you don’t quite understand but shove down the throats of anyone who will listen anyway.

Tell you what, tell that to someone who gets interactive widgets in the novels they buy. Tell that to children looking at iPad versions of picture books, where they can touch and move and read and look, where literature becomes more interactive than it ever has before. You’re all over literature coming to life on the page. So why not allow that to happen more literally? Go read, or make an iBook. Look at the quality of the software you’ve been given, and the market you’ve been granted conditional (don’t upload horrendous stuff) access to. Stop nitpicking and enjoy the opportunity to be new in a market that hasn’t been suffocated with terrible e-pub literature yet.

*breathes*

Laters.

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