Success, a few points of general interest re iBA 2 (Australia)

Hello fellow iBA users

I'm in Australia and have been working on my own multi touch book since iBA was first released early this year. I was almost finished when iBA ver 2 came out, which was very timely. I'd previously created, for a client, a simpler book on a different subject using iBA and had little or no difficulty uploading it to the client's paid account, so I had some experience before getting to the crunch point with my own book.

Fortunately I had no severe time constraints with my own book and steadily jumped over the numerous but necessary administrative hurdles which attend the creation of a paid books account with Apple for someone who is not a US citizen. I must admit, that, in retrospect, the process of creating the account was not as difficult as it seemed. It was at first like standing at the foot of a mountain which needed to be climbed only to find, embarking on the climb, that there are lots of signs and stairways which make the climb less difficult than it could be.

I prepared the book package carefully and opted to create my own sample book (18mb) which you can view from the link further down, instead of allowing the Publish package to automatically create one. As part of the package I also prepared ten pages from the iPad display as page samples, being unaware that there were limits to this number. Then, using iBA's (ver 2) built in "Publish" process, I assembled the package and was allowed to include all ten sample pages in it. But when the last checks were performed by Apple prior to upload I was informed that I had too many sample pages and had to reduce the chosen page images to five. Having received clearance I uploaded the package on Tuesday afternoon last week. The upload took three or four hours, which is longer than I expected for a 145mb main file, 18mb sample and five page samples. I noticed as the upload was underway that the package seemed to be sent in "bursts" with the transmit speed of a "burst' initially very high and then gradually diminishing to zero, after which, following a few seconds at zero, a new "burst" would start. As the book was quite complex with 16 chapters, 29,000 words, interactive high-res images and 12 movies I was expecting that I might get a ticket or two.

Woke up early the next morning, about 12 hours after upload, to find that the book was already available on the Australia iBookstore 🙂. No tickets. Cleared in less than 12 hours. I then added other stores but couldn't add New Zealand and a heap of Latin American countries because I didn't have a contract to sell in those stores. I'll follow this up, in due course.

Here's the book's Bookstore page (that's me on the cover):

A few points which may be of interest to iBA users:

• I used in excess of 200 high res (up to 12mp) images and didn't bother to crop or resample any. I conducted all sizing action in iBA and allowed many very large images to bleed off the page edges, so that they filled the page background. Whether these images would have got through from iBA ver 1 I'm not sure, but iBA 2, which includes image optimization, sorted them out on the fly. So, no need to crop and resize before image use in iBA. Just pull them from iPhoto and use them. I also found I could drag in PDF and EPS format files as images.
• My videos were shot by me with a compact Pentax Optio W60 or W80, chest-cam mounted or hand held. These cameras shoot 1280x720, 16fps (W60) or 32fps (W80) and they are waterproof to 5m depth which is the minimum requirement for survival in the environment in which shooting took place. I edited the movies in iMovie, adding voiceover and other effects as I considered necessary and prepared them for use in iBA exactly as Apple recommends. All of them were trimmed to the essentials, with none running for much more than one minute as I recall. The image quality of these movies was not ideal as there were scenes where water droplets appeared on the lens and many where the sound quality was less than perfect. Nevertheless I used the clips because they were authentic, shot in difficult circumstances, and generated a feel for the environment in which the camera was working.
• My final iBA Ver 2 file on my Macbook Pro (4gb RAM) was 2.3gb. I noticed that once I upgraded to iBA ver 2, the main file size dropped by about 400mb, and Ver2 was much better to work with than its predecessor, having done away with the difficulties I found in its predecessor with copying and pasting widgets and images between chapters and between publications.

I hope the above is of use to others who may be in the process of working with iBA and Apple, whose support, I must say, has been very good. Thanks.

Kev Long

Noosa

Australia