Use iBooks Author, only Apple can ever publish the result

Sounds just like the....

Contracts from the music industry that Michael Jackson and George Michael were saddled with, oh and anyone signed up with Simon Cowell.

They want to OWN you!

Re: "What's happened to them?"

They realised that they can get away with pretty much anything. Now it's all about the $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ .

Not a fair comparison, Adobe isn't giving Photoshop away for free. Last time I checked it cost quite a bit, as does InDesign which many use to layout books.

This is a free tool, it's not that surprising that it comes with this condition. Apple have hardly invented this concept (not sure who came up with it first, but I've used free PCB layout tools exclusively tied to PCB fabrication company in the past)

Kind of

Kind of like that, except mostly completely different because last time I checked Adobe didn't give photoshop away for free.

I don't really see a problem with this license agreement, how else are you going to distribute a format that can only be used on iOS if not through iTunes?

The problem is for any poor kid whose tutor decides that this is the best way for them to buy textbooks and is therefore forced into owning an iPad when they might already own some kind of other tablet device.

If an author is going to sell textbooks at $15 a time they don't need to sell many before they can easily afford to pay for a software package like this outright.

Someone else needs to come into the market with a similar product that uses an html5 approach and can be displayed in the browsers of all the competing hardware. Amazon's kindle web app is an example of how this can be done.

Or, like CAD developers if they were to try to

Charge dirt cheap, but then locking up the format as a hostage for ransom for each sale.

It would only be like that if Adobe provided all of the software needed for free.

Apple is a publicly traded corporation whose investors expect growth and profit. They are not a charitable organization and never have been. The chances are that most textbooks will already be in a publish-ready format and will simply be pasted and tweaked into iBooks.

I don't particularly love Apple, but this step isn't particularly surprising given their history of wanting to control content and profit from it.

As bad if you get trapped

"And as everyone has said, this restriction is only to the iBooks2 format file that gets generated. Nothing to stop you producing another copy of your file with a different tool that is purely epub3 compatible and missing the iBooks2 specialsauce."

But I presume this tool is designed to encourage you to type the text into it. In which case, you're bound to Apple by the EULA if you want to sell it:

"If you charge a fee for any book or other work you generate using this software ... you may only sell or distribute such Work through Apple (e.g., through the iBookstore) and such distribution will be subject to a separate agreement with Apple."

You can only get out of that if you create your work with something else and then import it into iBooks Author.

because of course

Apple should provide a free bit of software to allow you to create stuff for the competition... why?

So?

Its still a free market and so publishers are free to develop their own authoring tools and give them away. Don't like Apple's distribution terms, don't use "iBooks Author" and use a free or costly alternative.

To me what would be more interesting to see if this is limited by an (unenforceable) EULA or is using a DRM mechanism. If its the first then I can see an opportunity for some Open Source software to "strip" any iBooks specific content from the Apple enhanced ePub3 format and even reformat it to remove anything that could be deemed to identify it as "produced using iBooks Author". Apple would then have a big difficulty in proving which format was used to package the content originally, i.e. someone made it in ePub3 format and then imported it in to iBooks Author and added the "extended" content ... or was it the other way around??

Where did you read this about a yearly fee? I just signed up without one.

Maybe you imagined it?

But is repackaging an option? Does this restriction apply only to the distribution of the resulting ebook file, or to the distribution of the creative work that the ebook file represents?

Reading the quoted passage from the EULA, to me it sounds like any eBook packaged via Apple's software can only be sold via Apple. That eBook cannot be repackaged from the original source text/files/fdata using different tools for sale via another channel. Apple therefore claims exclusivity for the textbook completely.

Of course, if you are giving your work away, then it looks like the exclusivity condition doesn't apply.

Or am I reading it wrong?