Yesterday morning, Rick Perry quit the presidential race and endorsed iBooks Author. Er, no, something else. Oh, yes: Apple unveiled the iBooks Author program that is an easier (if not frictionless) tool for creating ebooks for iBooks, and (not coincidentally), partnerships with the big three text publishers to sell more stuff to schools. There are some very interesting things in iBooks Author, but it’s not magic.
First, the roundup, starting with a small publisher, Adam Engst, and then some responses by academics:
- Kathleen Fitzpatrick (who was at the unveiling-without-a-curtain)
- Timothy Burke
- Dean Dad (the anonymous community-college dean)
Discussion of the iBooks Author End User License Agreement (or EULA, which locks the iBook Author output into Apple’s proprietary iOS app of the same name):
Other comments that are not focused entirely on the End User License Agreement (but may discuss the EULA):
- Audrey Watters (who calls this the counter-revolution)
- Tim Carmody, short-range and long-duree
- David Rothman
- Brian Barrett
- John Paul Titlow
- Lance Ulanoff
Only Ulanoff bought into the Apple argument that a digital-rights-managed (DRM’d), single-platform authoring tool was revolutionary. Been there, done that, got the app for it. For those who remember similar debates about multi-platform app development back in the Pleistocene 2010, you ever play around with PhoneGap? I suspect that within half a year there will be alternative ways of creating ebooks with inserts/widgets just like iBooks Author except with the capacity to export to multiple formats… just like your word processor can today. There are already pieces of that around. Abdel Ibrahim argues that iBooks Author replicates what the nascent Push Pop Press began to do before Facebook bought it at the end of last summer. Articulate Presenter gives users (often corporate trainers but also instructional designers in higher ed) the capacity to create online teaching modules with “interactive” bits like multiple-choice quizzes and media. Yes, the iBooks Author EULA locks the software-created package into Apple’s delivery service for commercial stuff… but it’s not complete. First, it’s the package (or Work) that clearly comes under the contract provisions. I doubt that the same stuff in different packages (packaged by different software) would be restricted in any way. Apple’s just betting that iBooks Author will be sufficiently easy that it will capture authors/small publishers. That bet assumes I am wrong about the multi-format editing software I see in the future. The second multi-format editing software exists, I’m guessing Apple will remove that bit of power-tripping in the same way it removed digital-rights-management control of music it delivered over iTunes. So the exclusivity may well be temporary.
Apart from the questions of exclusive format in iBooks Author, what does it bring to the table? As others have said, it has a look and feel much like Keynote with a bit of Pages tossed in (Apple’s proprietary presentation and word-processing software). And it has the object-insertion options: media files, quizlets, and Mac OS X-style “Dashboard widgets.” It’s the last that has the potential for something relatively new: interaction between readers and authors/publishers. I don’t know if Apple’s .iba ebooks format allows significant interaction online the way a browser would, but if it’s possible to embed a simple form in a widget that posts the result somewhere and can grab live data, then you could have points in an iBooks where readers answer a question… and readers could immediately see a summary of recent responses (say, the last week’s worth of responses, or the last 100). And similarly, a widget could serve up live data — in a geology text, recent seismological data or a live image of an eruption in progress. In astronomy, recent images from Hubble or other telescopes. In public administration, a budget simulation. I hope you get the idea: if the widgets can be made sufficiently interactive, authors can serve up information to or seek responses from readers within the frame of an ebook. Let’s toss the notion that using a touch-control such as pinch-zooming is significant interaction. It’s not interaction so much as a mechanical affordance to examine an object. And that’s just fine, but it’s limiting.
So here’s what I would do if I had more time, if the way iBooks can use widgets is interactive with servers: I would use iBooks Author as a testbed for interactions, probably micro-level interactions between students and readings. If I thought a certain type of object might be useful in a text but wasn’t sure — say, a graph of spending patterns in public schools in a text on education policy — I might create an iBook text with the graph and place a question immediately afterwards, asking the reader to tell me what they thought the main point of the graph was. I’d do the same with a bunch of elements in a text and then give away the draft text online to faculty with whom I can share the data (from all readers, not just their institution). Faculty of the draft text have some information about common responses by readers (students). So do I, and I can change the text in response to that, put it out in any format I want, and what iBooks Author has done has given me access to readers in a unique way.
Or let’s take it one step further and see how this could be used for research purposes: One could put an informed-consent procedure in an iBooks. One could then gather data through an iPad-administered instrument and have the data appear in a server. And a little more along these lines: a widget doesn’t have to serve the same object every time. One could randomize what appears in the widget. In this case, the iBook is never sold but just placed on iPads used in a single environment.
I can think of several other things to do with iBooks Author, and in each case it would the program’s ease of use and widgets rather than relying on sales through Apple… assuming the widgets can talk online. That’s the key.
Would not the iBook revolution in college textbooks present an unprecedented advertising opportunity for marketeers? Product placements (in all those little pop-up’s), advertising banners, you name it.
No wonder they are saying that this will keep down the cost of college textbooks! There is even room here for colleges like USF to skim a little of the top (like they do with their bookstores)AND run ad campaigns.
I’ve seen the future, and it is just one big billboard!
Possibly, but that exists anyway with other platforms. The revolution will not be Appleized…