Ibook 2 textbooks for private distribution

You can distribute .ibooks files just like any other file (as long as you are not charging money). Users just drag the file into iTunes. You can also add a password for security. From the iBooks Author Help:

Require a Password

You can set a password so that only people who know the password can open an iBooks Author document.

Set a password

1. If the Document inspector isn’t open, click Inspector in the toolbar and click the Document Inspector button.
2. Click Document and select “Require password to open” at the bottom of the Document pane.
3. Enter the password twice (once in the Password field and again in the Verify field), enter a hint to help you remember the password, and click Set Password.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5071

As long as you are not charging a fee for your 'manuals' you can simply export iBooks Author generated handbook to your employees by simply selecting said option from the File menu and exporting as a native .ibook, .pdf, .txt format. Either store this on your network server or simply attach to an email and have your employees retrieve their email off their iPad to open the iBook.

You have the option to require a password when exporting your .ibook and .pdf.

Again this is for non monetary distribution.

Jonathan,

We have very similar need--distribute internal training material in iBook file format to some employees. Don't want to use iTunes for distribution, but simply store files on our servers and use either a "push" or "pull" publishing model (whichever will be easier to implement)

Curious if you've tried this yet. I'm new to the apple world, so I'm having trouble envisioning how the users would see the iBook files on the server that are available for download (as described by esagustin13)

I am using iTunes 11.0 and I am unable to drag and drop the file in to itunes. Any ideas?

Thank you guys, both for posing this question and answering it. I thought it'd make a nice gift for my boyfriend if I made a book just for him of photos, his favorite poetry and me singing because he's always on his ipad. Since I definitely wouldn't want it publish, I had the same problem, and most of Apple's information on the matter is about how to go about publishing. Thanks again! 🙂

Hey,

Just a brief disclamer here -- I work for Bookry so I hope you don't see this as advertising....

You can upload your book to Bookry and host it in a private BookStore only inviting those who you want to see your book see it. They can download it from here using safari on their iPad to start reading in iBooks. All for free 🙂

Alternatively if you have iTunes U in your country we've seen people make pretty good use of this. It's more aimed at education but works great for sharing iBooks files irregardless. You can always take the dropbox route which works pretty well too.

I imagine all the above would be a little more user friendly than setting things up on your own server. Hope this helps!

I'm sorry to dig this thread up, but just to make sure, I want to make an ibook file to put as an .ibooks file available for download on my website free of charge

Can I do this?

bartleemans wrote:

Can I do this?

Yes. That is what the Apple license says.

I have a question. Im making a Ibook for a company and their biggest consern is being able to shut the book down if a paticular person leaves the company. What makes it hard is that thier employees are spread out through the US. I cant install apple config and remote wipe seeing that a lot of useres will use thier own ipads. I need to find a way to disable the book and certain ipads as these people will no longer work within the company. Also this is a book that we are not publishing throught the apple store. its only for internal use. Can someone please help me find a solution to my problem?

Using an QR code who includes the url to the file is one way to distribute it in an nice and contolled way.

The students arrive to the classrom and on the screen is the QR code so they can download the correct document.

I believe the best way to handle this is to make sure they are using a device management tool, such as AirWatch. This is by no means a pitch for that application, but I know you can securely push out and manage content like iBooks. This restricts reading the content on a company-managed device only, which adds some security and prevents them from using personal devices. If a device is enrolled in a corporate AirWatch deployment, the admin can both remove content and/or disable the device once someone leaves the company.

How do you go about deploying via AirWatch? Does it provide for a simple user experience? Does it show download progress?

I ask because when we tested this method, it required that we push what’s called a “web clip” onto the iPad (i.e. a browser shortcut that looks like an app). The user then needs to click on that link, load a page, click “Install” for the iBook and then wait. There’s no indication of the install progress and it doesn’t tell you that it’s successful. We were able to get it to work on one device, but not another. And when it did work, it took numerous hours for the book to appear. It's a large file (~700MB) because it is full of video and interactivity, but it does play via the iPad. When we tested via DropBox, it only took 20mins to download over WiFi and play via iBooks, but there's no progress inidicator via that option either as far as we can tell.

Thoughts? Thank you.