Source: Apple scores with digital textbooks and app – USATODAY.com.

To encourage development, Apple launched iBooks Author, a free authoring tool for the Mac that encourages anyone to produce their own iBook textbooks, cookbooks, how-tos and other works. Apple says more than 600,000 copies of the tool have been downloaded since launch. Authors can distribute the books for free. But if they put the iBook textbook up for sale, they must do so through Apple’s iBookstore. (Authors can use the content in other digital and print formats, Apple says.)

Who among us, especially us bloggers, doesn’t want to be a published author. Well, now Apple has made that a distinct possibility and it is easier than you think. I recently downloaded their iBooks Author app and it is an impressive tool!  I am including a few snapshots here.

I have not had the time yet to thoroughly analyze this tool but upon a cursory look it seems to I be very user-friendly.  But, of course user-friendly is the rule rather than the exception with Apple software. 🙂 I will let you know more about the tool in a future post.

It was once quite an ordeal to have a book published but in today’s electronic world with e-books becoming the norm it is getting much easier to do. One reason is that a factory line no longer needs to be dedicated to producing a bound document. E-books will of course result in a proliferation of new novels and such. With this much easier method of becoming a published author will also come with an increased responsibility of marketing your own material.  To those familiar with the myriad of social sites available today that job is also easier than it used to be.

If you want to be a successful author you have to determine if anyone out there will actually pay to read your material. This is where the well prepared vs. amateur will shine. A good way to find out if you have an audience for your topic is to start a blog about it and then grow it into an e-book if there is interest. So, if you are fortunate enough to have an Apple computer grab a free copy of iBook Publisher and give it a try. Before long you may just be a “published author”.