iBooks Author: Can You Co-Author on Multiple Machines?

I am trying to have 20 students contribute chapters to an anthology of folk tales

Very simple, discuss the needs of teh book and ask each to create a chapter and allocate who does Chapter 1...and repeat for each chapter.

.not finding a way to export/import iBookAuthor chapters or pages from one machine to another

Very easy - each student and yourself needs to download and install teh free app "Dropbox" there are others - this is the best IMHO - each student then uploads their chapter to Dropbox. The other and maybe easier way if everytbody is meeting in a "classroom" is the inevitable USB!

One ( or more ) person is designated as editor and pulls down the chapters from drop box using the links or public folder access. Once gathered on one machine, thay are assembled in iBooks Author.

How to create the book?

The first essential is to decide which template to use. Will it be a standard freebie or will it be editted and customised to your own design.

Once the template is completed - it is saved as a template and save again as template "yourname1"

Now you have two copies on standby. open as an iBooks Author from the template and save as ( whatever your books is to be named). Each student then gets a copy of that file... by same process of using Dropbox or USB

The editor ends up with 20 files and if each uses its designated chapter number....

Have all your 20 chapters available and simply copy and paste into the book tree on the left.

After the first past- delete the original chapter 1 - you paste becomes Chapter one - now repeat the process.

Its quite easy really. I suggest you create a few chapters in a Test book and then open another different template as test 2 and start copying and pasting chapters to get the hang of it.

The book as a whole now needs editting if you intend to have a glossary and maybe tweek or correct anything in the other chapters.