On Jan 31, 2012, at 4:40 AM, Silberberg, David wrote: Just be VERY careful of the EULA – as long as you keep your ebooks free of charge, you’re okay, but if you want to charge for an eBook there are restrictions, apparently regardless of whether you sell via the iBookstore. May be a moot point for federal agencies, but better safe than sorry.
The EULA restriction is that you cannot sell the iBook Author book (IBA) through any other store, which isn't really an issue right now because only the iPad has an application that can read it. You *can* export the book to other file types (e.g., PDF), but you lose a lot of the iBooks 2 experience.
Also, iBook Author appears to extend the ePub standards to the point that what you publish with iBook Author is not readable on other eBook readers.
The whole eBook system is a mess right now. If you look at the three major eBook ecosystems -- Amazon + Kindle, Barnes & Noble + nook, Apple + iPad -- there is no single format accepted by all (except maybe PDF). For example, the last I checked the Kindle does not support EPUB; Amazon uses its own proprietary format.
Furthermore, "EPUB" is a slippery term. When a vendor says they support EPUB, like nook and iPad do, they do not specify whether it is EPUB 2 or EPUB 3 standard. My guess is that they are referring to EPUB 2, which is good for books with just text (e.g., paperback fiction), but not good for complex, highly formatted books like text books.
I'm not familiar with any good EPUB 3 authoring tools, and even if you did produce an EPUB 3 book, I doubt you can sell it through the major vendors for any of the major devices.
Right now there are three formats targeting richer format experience:
1) EPUB 3 -- supported by ??? + ????
2) iBooks Author (IBA) -- supported by Apple + iPad
3) Kindle Format 8 (KF8) -- supported by Amazon + Kindle
It is a little like the Wild West out there right now.
Todd
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