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Are any iBooks Author books coming out?

We all hear about the seemingly difficult process of getting an iBooks Author book through Apple's gates. It would be nice to see what is emerging as finally published books. We've seen a few mentioned here but where are the new titles coming out this week? Are free books arriving faster than paid books? I've scanned the new releases listed in iTunes and the iBooks Store but see little that resembles an iBooks Author publication, certainly few showcasing screenshots and enhanced features.

I've been waiting for Maria Langer's new 'enhanced' book on iBooks Author but saw this disheartening paragraph on here blog:

April 7, 2012 Update: One of the two tickets on my book has disappeared, but the other remains. Despite several attempts to contact Apple, it’s still unclear whether they realize that I have resolved this ticket. I keep getting canned responses that do not indicate whether they are following up on my problem. It seems to me as if they’re just sending out a response without even looking up the situation. I’m frustrated beyond belief at this point and angry about potential lost sales. And there’s no one at Apple who I can contact to get a definitive answer. Clearly, the iBooks Author publishing experience is broken and Apple is uninterested in fixing it.

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I'm hoping for some good news from this Forum.

Posted on Apr 18, 2012 12:23 PM

18 replies

Apr 19, 2012 12:48 AM in response to MichiHenning

My guess is that you are right. Unfortunately this is the thing we have to do since iBookstore appeared to be broken right now. It also does not seem to allow us to distribute Chinese content, to places that we are interested in selling books to (primary, Asia).

So App Store is the only way out right now. This might make sense to some multimedia books - like for us, we have music video books for kids, and we have nature books that teaches kids animals and birds via video. These do make sense in App Store as long as they don't look like a book and more like an interactive application.

Before iBookstore comes along, people do delivered magazines (wait... they still do that) and books via App Store.

Apr 19, 2012 12:51 AM in response to thye chean

I see your quandary. Part of the problem is that the entire publishing world is being turned on its head by new technology, and it will be quite a few more years before the various players involved have worked out what works and what works not, and we'll see some sort of stability.

One of the truly great things about the stability of traditional books is all the infrastructure we have around them, such as catalogs, databases, citation indexes, and so on. That infrastructure adds a lot of value that, currently, isn't available for apps, and available only in very limited form for eBooks.

Eventually, we'll have to develop systems that solve the same problems across a variety of media. No small challenge…

MIchi.

Apr 19, 2012 12:58 AM in response to MichiHenning

I think if Apple make the approval process as efficient as App Store (one week), and allows author to update their book without pulling away their books in store, Apple is close to what you describe.

Apple is so close to that dream - and the iBooks Author is so great - that it is quite heartbreaking to see the process so broken.

Are any iBooks Author books coming out?