iBooks Author Kerfuffle
Posted January 19th, 2012 @ 06:00pm by Erik J. Barzeski
I don't understand the kerfuffle over the iBooks Author EULA.
Apple is not claiming rights to your text or illustrations.
They're simply claiming that if you use their authoring tool to put together an interactive book, you must either give it away free or sell it via the iBookstore.
If you want to use another authoring tool to sell your book on Amazon, the Kindle, ePub, whatever.
Pretending that the EULA states anything other than that - like that Apple owns the "content" or the actual words or requires you to sell those words only via their store - is stupid, preposterous, and dishonest.
Of course, there are saner perspectives as well.
Donate Life
Posted 23 Jan 2012 at 9:37am #
So what you're saying is that you have to spend time formatting your work several times rather than designing it once and exporting it in different formats. That's like recording a music album, mixing it, and only being able to sell it on cassette tapes rather than simply outputting it to CDs, DVDs, streaming, etc.
Posted 27 Jan 2012 at 7:08am #
Don, if you don't think the music industry has to do that - master the music differently depending on the format it's going to - you're nuts.
Furthermore, the Kindle authoring tools have exactly the same terms and conditions. So, yes.
Why should Apple provide a free tool that outputs formats you can then sell outside of the iBookstore?
The kerfuffle is over the misinterpretation that Apple somehow owns the CONTENT of your books and you can't publish it elsewhere. It does not.