I’ve stayed out of the debate on Apple’s new educational initiative which was announced yesterday. It looks to be a big development for the text book industry and text book users. I’m not in either camp, so I have no strong views. However, David Sparks of MacSparky, who is an author and is now seriously considering self publishing for his third book.
I just spent several hours playing with iBook Author’s media tools inserting movies, keynote animations, and interactive pictures into my new secret projectand it ruined me. There is no turning back. As an author and a reader, I will never look at a static page e-book the same. While for some types of books, like novels, words on a page are fine, for a lot of books the failure to include media just became inexcusable. I can’t imagine going back.
After my three hours of experimentation, I can report that I’m seriously reconsidering the entire model for this new book. Specifically, I may now only release this new book for the iPad and not bother with other versions. The ability to embed, manipulate, and demonstrate concepts with rich media will render this new work so superior on the iPad to anything I could make for any other platform, that I may not bother with the others.