We know that self-publishing is the fastest-growing segment of the publishing industry. We also know that the Apple iStore is one of the most common places for purchasing self-published e-books. Well, we shouldn’t be surprised that the two are now meeting … and turning an industry upside-down to boot.
At their most recent presentation, Apple introduced iBooks 2, a new multimedia textbook platform, and iBooks Author, which is being promoted as “a shockingly easy authoring tool to create them.”
And yes, even though the tool seems to focus on textbooks, this incredibly easy system will allow authors to create any type of book and easily transform it into an ebook and put it up for sale on the iBookstore. It’s really that simple.
According to Publishers Weekly, “any author can follow the template or make up a new one and drag-and-drop prepared materials like text and video right into the new book. Once complete, a push of the button places it in the iBookstore in a digital marketplace holding hundreds of millions of credit card numbers.”
And if that’s not enough, here’s another piece of news: both the new iBooks 2 app and iBooks Author app are free. That’s unlike any other self-publishing tool or e-book conversion tool out there.
Wow.
On a side note, I’m curious to see how this change is going to impact other self-publishing big-wigs, like CreateSpace. Nor do we have any information yet on whether these books created for iPads can easily be transformed into Kindle or NOOK versions. All of that is to come, I’m sure. So stay tuned.
No matter what, though, we have to hand it to Apple. They continue to lead the pack in just about everything.