If you’ve ever fancied the idea of publishing your own book there are a number of obstacles to overcome. Aside from coming up with an idea and actually writing the words, the process of finding a publishing and get to your target audience is simply too much for many authors. Now, whether you are looking to unleash your novel or want to publish a text book about your area of expertise, iBook Author is available to enable you to design, create and publish ebooks through Apple’s iBooks.

The app is available for Mac and includes a number of highly cutsomizable templates that can be used to create everything from reference books to interactive guides. The app has been specifically designed to help with the creation of books that can be read on iPad, so there is a strong focus on multi-touch support and interactive page elements. Rather than limiting your books to traditional words and pictures, you can also include videos, presentations, web content, photo galleries and more.

If you have already started to write the text for a book in a word processor, it is possible to import this into a new book and the templates can be quickly personalized to suit your needs. The process of creating stunning iPad books made as simple as creating a web site using a WYSIWYG tool. Creating a book of any style often involves little more than replacing the sample text and page widgets with content of your own.

The books you create are saved in iBooks format so they can only be viewed on an iPad, and you have the option of either sharing them through iTunes U, or selling or giving publications away through the iBookstore. Apple has been at the forefront of many technological revolutions, and here we can see how the ebook market is set to change. This is a tool that enables you to be a part of this.

What's new in v2.0?

• Create new gorgeous portrait-only books
• Embed custom fonts into books for complete control over text appearance
• Add even more interactivity with new Scrolling Sidebar and Pop-Over widgets
• Support for mathematical expressions with new native equation editing using both LaTeX and MathML notation
• Automatic optimization of media for iPad
• Improved support for embedded audio, including the ability to play an audio file by tapping an image
• Improved publishing workflow, including automatic sample book creation and pre-publish checking
• Additional Apple-designed templates
• Version numbering for books
• Enhanced to take advantage of the Retina display on the new MacBook Pro
• Performance improvements
• Usability improvements