iBooks Author

Last time I looked at iBooks Author it was a big load of useless.  No equation editor and only worked on an iPad.  It couldn't be used for making a math textbook by a teacher in any reasonable length of time.

The last update has changed things a little.  It's still mainly of use on an iPad.  Text and images can be exported to pdf, but the interactive components are lost.   The equation editor is still missing, but iBooks Author now accepts latex and MathML so there are readily available applications that can format math text and then the symbolic logic can be quickly imported.

I wrote an iBook/ebook today that covers index laws up to a year 10 level.  It was 15 pages and was written in a day including interactive quizzes.  Given a bit more time, I'll add screencasts, Australian Curriculum links and CAS calculator usage for each section and upload it to iTunes.  I doubt I'll sell many, but it's a great point for distributing to my iPad year 8 class next year.  I know now that my flipped year 8 classes are possible.

It's a better solution than Prezi, which was my fallback if I couldn't get iBooks to work.

Update (25/11): Well my first ebook has been submitted to iTunes.  Let's see what happens next.

Update (25/11): To charge for an iBook you need to have a US tax account.  How the hell do I get one of those?

Update (27/11): Still waiting for iTunes approval to publish the free textbook.

Update (5/12): Published. yay! Find it here.

Update (31/12): Someone downloaded it! From Spain!