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iBooks® Author For Dummies®

by Galen Gruman

iBooks® Author For Dummies®

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774 www.wiley.com

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2012938399

ISBN 978-1-118-37679-9 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-40197-2 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-37677-5 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-37675-1

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

About the Author

Galen Gruman has been doing production of newspapers, magazines, and books for about 35 years, having caught the layout and production bug from his junior high school newspaper. He was involved in one of the first desktop publishing efforts of a national publication in the early 1980s and has reviewed desktop publishing software for both InfoWorld (IDG Enterprise) and Macworld (Mac Publishing) until the late 1990s. Since 1990, he’s co-authored or written a series of how-to books for the publisher of this book, John Wiley & Sons, for most of the major layout programs of their eras: PageMaker, QuarkXPress, and InDesign. Gruman has also been doing some website coding and production over the last decade and has produced e-books for Wiley in the more recent years, in addition to his day job as the InfoWorld.com website’s executive editor. iBooks Author represents the next wave of publishing, so of course he had to learn — and teach — this tool, as well.

Publisher’s Acknowledgments

We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments at http://dummies.custhelp.com. For other comments, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax 317-572-4002.

Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:

Acquisitions and Editorial

Project Editor: Laura K. Miller

Acquisitions Editor: Kyle Looper

Copy Editor: Laura K. Miller

Technical Editor: Dennis R. Cohen

Editorial Manager: Jodi Jensen

Editorial Assistant: Leslie Saxman

Sr. Editorial Assistant: Cherie Case

Cover Photo: © iStockphoto.com / ALEAIMAGE © iStockphoto.com / marinello

Interior Photos: Courtesy of Ingall W. Bulls, III

Composition Services

Senior Project Coordinator: Kristie Rees

Layout and Graphics: Joyce Haughey, Christin Swinford

Proofreader: Sossity R. Smith

Indexer: Valerie Haynes Perry

Publishing and Editorial for Technology Dummies

Richard Swadley, Vice President and Executive Group Publisher

Andy Cummings, Vice President and Publisher

Mary Bednarek, Executive Acquisitions Director

Mary C. Corder, Editorial Director

Publishing for Consumer Dummies

Kathleen Nebenhaus, Vice President and Executive Publisher

Composition Services

Debbie Stailey, Director of Composition Services

Introduction

An e-book is no longer just a book you read on a computer, tablet, smartphone, or e-reader. Thanks to Apple’s iBooks Author software, an e-book can be a dynamic experience, letting readers explore information through interactive graphics, audio and video recordings, slideshow presentations, and live web widgets (a snippet of web functionality, not a full website or web page).

Imagine children’s books that let readers explore the story and connect with other fans. Imagine a service manual that lets a technician get the most recent parts information and turn a 3D diagram around to get a better understanding of a potentially malfunctioning part. Imagine a financial report, a scientific paper, a how-to book, an encyclopedia, a documentary-style history book, or any other document exploring complex and changing information that could go beyond text and static images.

You don’t have to imagine such documents any longer. You can create them instead on your Mac with Apple’s free iBooks Author software and distribute them — for free or for money — to any iPad user, of which there are tens of millions.

But iBooks Author is a first-version product, and that lack of maturity clearly shows in some of the limitations and unintuitive approaches it has when it comes to creating that new kind of dynamic publication that makes iBooks Author so compelling. So users may need a guide to not just the possibilities, but also how to deal with the potholes in the road along the way.

What This Book Offers

This book explains how to create dynamic documents in iBooks Author, as well as how to distribute them to readers. You don’t need to be a book publisher to use iBooks Author, thanks to its straightforward user interface; if you’ve used Apple’s Pages word processor, you already know how to use many of iBooks Author’s textual and layout capabilities.

Of course, the more you know about creating the interactive elements iBooks Author can embed in your e-book, the more advantage you can take of iBooks Author in your own project. The good news is that you can use none, some, or all of these dynamic features in your iBooks Author e-book, so you can start with what you already know and build up skills in the other areas over time, as needed.

This book won’t teach you how to create videos, websites, slideshows, or 3D graphics. You need to use the appropriate tools for each of those, which I point you to in the following section.

This book does explain how to prepare your content for use in iBooks Author, lay out an e-book optimally for reading on the iPad, and distribute your e-book to iPad users.

What You Need to Use iBooks Author

iBooks Author is available only for Macintosh computers, so you must have a Mac to use it. And not just any Mac: iBooks Author requires that your Mac run Mac OS X Lion version 10.7.2 or later (or the Mac OS X Mountain Lion version 10.8, to be released in summer 2012), which means your Mac must use an Intel chip. The free iBooks Author application is available only through the Apple Mac App Store, which you access via the App Store software that comes with Mac OS X Lion (and OS X Mountain Lion).

iBooks Author’s Mac orientation isn’t limited to needing a Mac to run it. If you want to embed a slideshow, you must create them in Apple’s Keynote software, available for $10 on the iPad and for $20 on the Mac. (You can also get Keynote as part of the Apple $79 iWork suite sold in some online and physical retail stories on discs.)

Of course, you need the tools to create your source files. For text created outside iBooks Author, you’re limited to Microsoft Word (or programs that can export to the Word .doc or .docx format) and Apple Pages. For tables, you’re limited to Word, Excel, Pages, and Numbers. Note that iBooks Author doesn’t care if the files were created on a Mac or Windows PC (or, in the case of Pages and Numbers, on a Mac or iPad). And for web widgets, you’re limited to Apple’s Dashcode and Tumult’s Hype applications, although you can always link to an external website (which opens in the iPad’s Safari browser) from your iBooks Author e-book.

For the other supported file types — PDFs, graphics, audio, and video — you can use any programs that produce the compatible file formats. Examples include Adobe’s Creative Suite and its individual components (such as Photoshop for graphics, Acrobat Pro for PDFs, and Premiere for video), Apple GarageBand for audio, Apple Final Cut and iMovie for video, Mac OS X’s included QuickTime Pro for audio and video (including screencasts), and Collada-supporting apps such as Photoshop, Google Sketchup Pro, and Strata 3D for 3D images. (Chapters 4 and 6 explain the supported file formats in detail.)

You also need an iPad. Well, strictly speaking, you don’t need an iPad because you can preview your e-book on the Mac, but realistically, you want an iPad to test your e-books in the actual environment in which they’ll be used. Any model will do; the free iBooks 2.0 (or later) application that supports the iBooks Author format runs on all versions of the iPad, as long as you have the current (iOS 5 or later) operating system installed. (Your readers thus also need iPads running iOS 5 and iBooks 2.0, or later versions.)

To distribute e-books through Apple’s online iBookstore requires that you have a publisher’s account with Apple, and if you want to charge money for your e-book, you need access to a service that provides the ISBN codes booksellers must use for each book. (Chapter 8 explains how to set up a publisher’s account and how to get ISBN codes.)

Conventions Used in This Book

Throughout this book, I describe how to use the mouse and keyboard shortcuts for many of the applications covered. In doing so, I use the terms in the following sections to explain mouse, trackpad, and keyboard actions.

Mouse and trackpad conventions

I ask you to use your mouse or trackpad to run your Mac and all the applications that help you get work done. When I do, I use the following terms:

Click: Most Mac mice have only one button, but some have two or more. If you have a multi-button mouse, quickly press and release the leftmost mouse button once when I say to click the mouse. On an Apple Mighty Mouse or Magic Mouse, click the left side of the top surface. (For other mice that have only one button, just press and release the button you have.) If you’re using a MacBook laptop or Magic Trackpad, click the trackpad.

Double-click: When I say to double-click, quickly press and release the leftmost mouse button twice (if your mouse has only one button, just press and release twice the button you have). On some multi-button mice, one of the buttons can function as a double-click (you click it once, the mouse clicks twice); if your mouse has this feature, use it — it saves strain on your hand. You can also double-click a trackpad.

Right-click: Right-clicking means clicking the right mouse button. (With an Apple Mighty Mouse or Magic Mouse, you can click the right side of the top surface to get a right-click; just be sure to enable that capability in the Mouse system preference.) On a Mac’s one-button mouse, hold the Control key when clicking the mouse button to achieve the right-click effect. On multi-button Mac mice, Mac OS X automatically assigns the right button to Control-click. On a MacBook’s trackpad, hold the Control key when clicking the trackpad. Newer MacBooks and the Magic Trackpad can also be configured to right-click by tapping the lower-right corner of the trackpad or tapping with two fingers.

Drag: Dragging is used for moving and sizing items in a document. To drag an item, position the mouse pointer on it. Press and hold the mouse button, and then slide the mouse across a flat surface to drag the item. Release the mouse button to drop the dragged item in its new location. You can also drag by using the trackpad in the same fashion.

Menu commands

The commands that you select by using the program menus appear in this book in normal typeface.

Mac OS X has several kinds of menus:

Menus: All Mac OS X applications, including the Finder, display their main menu options at the top of the screen, in OS X’s menu bar. Click a menu heading to see its menu options, and click the desired menu option to choose it.

Pop-up menus: Within an application’s dialog boxes, panels, toolbars, and other user-interface elements, you may see menus indicated by a set of triangles (one pointing up and one pointing down) or a single down-pointing triangle. (Technically, those with the down-pointing triangle are called pull-down menus, but for simplicity, I call them all pop-up menus because they all work the same way.) Such pop-up menus have several presentation styles:

• Displayed in a rounded rectangle

• Have a name or icon with the menu indicator (the triangle icon) to its right

• Have their options in a white box (which means they’re fields whose options you can simply enter yourself, such as a font name, rather than use the menu options)

Pop-up menus that use icons rather than text labels are called icon menus. Click a pop-up menu to see its menu options, and click the desired menu option to choose it.

Contextual menus: Some menus are invisible until you right-click or Control-click an object on the screen. A menu of options appears next to where you right-clicked or Control-clicked; click the desired menu option to choose it.

If no contextual menu appears, it means that particular object has no options or that you have to use some other means (such as a dialog box or panel) to apply options to that object.

When you choose some menu commands, a related submenu appears with additional options. You can tell that a menu option has such a submenu because a right-facing triangle appears to the far left of the menu option’s name or icon.

If I describe a situation in which you need to select one menu and then choose a command from a secondary menu or list box, I use an arrow symbol. For example, if I tell you to choose Edit⇒Paste, you choose the Paste menu option from the Edit menu.

Keyboard conventions

If you’re a Windows user new to the Mac, the Return key on the Mac is the same as the Enter key on a PC keyboard, and the Delete key on the Mac is the same as the Backspace key on a PC.

If you’re supposed to press several keys at the same time, I indicate that by placing plus signs (+) between them. Thus, Control++A means press and hold the Control key and the Command key, and then press the A key. After you press the A key, let go of all three keys.

I use the hyphen (–) to join keys to mouse and touchpad movements. For example, Option-drag means to hold the Option key while dragging the mouse or your finger.

I provide programming code, full filenames, or filename extensions by formatting such text in a typewriter-like font, like this.

Gesture conventions

Because iBooks Author is a Mac application, it doesn’t really take advantage of gestures beyond scrolling. But the e-books you produce do respond to gestures when on the iPad, so here’s a quick rundown of the gestures your readers are likely to use (and that you should use when testing your e-book in iBooks on an iPad):

Tap: The most common iPad gesture. It’s commonly used to select an item or press a virtual button. To perform a tap, hold your finger over the iPad screen and then quickly touch the screen and lift your finger back up. In other words, tap it.

Double-tap: Two quick taps in succession. In iBooks, it can act like a contextual mouse click (a right-click) on the Mac or PC, displaying a contextual menu of options for the text you tap. This gesture also can launch a media object and advance slides in a slideshow.

Swipe: The most common gesture to quickly move through the contents within a window or pane. To swipe on the iPad, place your finger against the screen and drag it for a second or two up and down, or right and left, as the context requires. For example, in iBooks, you can swipe to the left or right to move to the previous or next page, respectively.

Scroll: The most common gesture to move through items on the screen, such as web pages and lists. iPad apps can use two kinds of scrolling gestures: dragging one or two fingers. Often, dragging two fingers scrolls within a pane or other fixed area, whereas dragging one finger drags the entire screen’s contents. Unlike swiping, scrolling moves the contents as far as you drag your fingers proportionally to the screen’s dimensions. In iBooks, a one-finger scroll is used to move from one page to another: Scroll to the left to go to the previous page; scroll to the right to go to the next page. If you scroll a page by using two fingers, you get the same effect as pinching a page. When scrolling, lift your finger off the screen when done. A swipe scrolls through one page’s worth of contents in iBooks.

Pinch: Many apps use the pinch gesture to zoom in. iBooks also uses the gesture to shrink a page and move it back to the book’s bar of page previews (in landscape orientation) or open the book’s table of contents (in portrait orientation). You can also use the pinch gesture to shrink a slideshow back to its container. To perform a pinch, place your thumb and index finger on the screen at the same time and then pinch them together.

Expand: The opposite gesture of pinch is expand, which is used to zoom out, such as to make a slideshow expand from its container to the full screen. Put both your index finger and thumb on the screen close to each other, then move them away from each other.

Rotate: Use the rotate gesture to rotate objects on the screen, such as 3D objects in iBooks. To do so, place your thumb and index finger on the screen as if starting the pinch gesture, but instead of pinching, rotate your fingers on the screen clockwise or counterclockwise.

Mac interface terms

Finally, let me explain some Mac OS X interface terms you probably don’t know the names of but use every day:

Button: An area, usually indicated via an outline around it, that you click to make the Mac do the button’s function.

Icon button: A button indicated via a graphical icon rather than by a word or phrase.

Menu: A list of options for the current application that comes from the row of options at the very top of the screen. (The various types of menus are explained in the “Menu commands” section, earlier in this introduction.)

Pop-up menu: A menu usually inside a dialog box, panel, bar, or other object, often indicated with either a down-pointing triangle to its right or a pair of triangles to its right.

Icon menu: A menu indicated via a graphical icon, rather than by a word or phrase.

Contextual menu: A menu of options for an object that appears when you right-click or Control-click that object.

Field: A space in which you enter text to provide a value, such as the angle of rotation in the Rotation field.

Stepper controls: A pair of triangles, usually one pointing up and one pointing down. When you click the triangles, the adjacent field’s values either decrease or increase, depending on which triangle you click.

Dialog box: A movable container for user controls — pop-up menus, stepper controls, fields, buttons, and so on — that when open doesn’t let you use other controls in the application. You usually have to click OK or Done to apply the settings and close the dialog box.

Panel: A movable container for user controls that remains open and available for use; you can use other parts of the application when it’s open.

Pane: A division within a dialog box, window, or panel. Often, you move from one pane to the other by clicking a tab or label with its name. In some cases, the panes are adjacent to each other, such as in a French door’s window panes.

Settings sheet: A container for controls that appears at the top of a window or dialog box. Like a dialog box, it prevents you from using other controls until you close the settings sheet. Unlike a dialog box, you can’t change its position.

Bar: A fixed area of the application window that contains controls, often icon buttons. The most common bar is the toolbar that appears at the top of many application windows. Some bars can be hidden when not in use.

Title bar: The top area of a window, dialog box, or panel that indicates its name or its contents’ name.

Close box: The leftmost circular button in the title bar of a window or panel; clicking it closes the window or panel.

Icons in This Book

This icon highlights an important point that you don’t want to forget because it just might come up again. Definitely pay attention to these details.

When this book discusses some really technical details, this icon warns you. Read the text that this icon points to only if you want to get some non-essential information, or you can just skip ahead if you don’t want the gory details.

Pay special attention to the paragraphs that feature this icon because they offer you useful tidbits and helpful solutions.

Look out! This icon tells you how to avoid trouble before it starts. Be sure to read and follow the accompanying information.

Where to Go from Here

All right, enough introduction. It’s time to get into iBooks Author itself. Because iBooks Author is a new program and works differently than other programs you may be familiar with, such as word processors and page layout software, it’s best to read the book’s chapters in order so that you can build on the key concepts while you go along.

If you’re impatient and experienced in other applications, you can skip or skim Chapter 1 and dive into Chapter 2, which lays out the fundamental concepts in iBooks Author that affect how you create the e-book itself and work within iBooks Author. And if you’re an experienced user of Apple Pages, most of Chapter 3 will be familiar to you because iBooks Author uses the same techniques for editing text as Pages does; so you can just skim that chapter.

Some of the iBooks Author concepts — such as its different treatment of portrait and landscape orientations — really do bring you into new territory, so don’t rush it. Read this book on your iPad, Kindle, or other device, and have iBooks Author running on your Mac so that you can actually try out the techniques and features this book describes. You can go from theory to practice that much faster.

Please note that some special symbols used in this eBook may not display properly on all eReader devices. If you have trouble determining any symbol, please call Wiley Product Technical Support at 800-762-2974. Outside of the United States, please call 317-572-3993. You can also contact Wiley Product Technical Support at www.wiley.com/techsupport.