How do I create a book template in Pages '09? I've written a 250 page, 35 Chapter, with pics and text colors, etc. in iBooks Author. It's almost done and now I find out I cannot self publish it except to the Apple Store. Any suggestions? I'm 72 and not very tech savvy. The book is titled "Healing Yourself Made Simple". It must be published.
MacBook, Mac OS X (10.7.5), Pages '09
First you must determine how you want to publish your book, which is what you should have done before you got this far.
Are you going to:
1. Print it to your desktop printer.
2. Have it printed and bound by a short run (less than 500 copies) commercial (inkjet/Xerox) printer you find on the Internet
3. Have it printed and bound by a commercial Offset (printing press) printer
4. Make an ePub (digital) book
5. Make a PDF book, locked or unlocked
6. Is it going to be free or are you going to charge for it, if so how do you expect to get paid and what do you think is reasonable?
Any physical printed books will be very expensive.
Any ePub or PDF or physical book will almost certainly make no money and will very likely cost you a lot instead.
If you still want to go ahead:
In iBooks Author:
Menu > File > Export > PDF or Text
The PDF will give you a digital version of the book which you can lock if you wish and/or publish through the Adobe Digital Management System which means users can pay to download it and not be able to steal it.
The Text will only give you the Text for reuse elsewhere, say in Pages. The images and anything else you have will need to be gathered elsewhere. You can copy them from iBooks Author and resave them from Preview .app.
If you are going to use Pages (which version?) to create your book, you need to work out what it is your end book is going to be (see list above) and work back from that.
Peter
gloria132 wrote:
now I find out I cannot self publish it except to the Apple Store.
You don't need to use the Apple Store if your book is free.
Thank you for your response.
My original book (an ebook) was written in iBook Author 3 yrs ago and this is a major revision. This revision was already in iBA and I didn't consider I couldn't revise and make a hard cover book from it. I will be self publishing a hard cover book of thousands and charging for it and realize it will be quite expensive.
To use Pages '09 as a template, would I just add text boxes somewhat like what I have in iBA and add the text to each accordingly?
gloria132 wrote:
This revision was already in iBA
Then why not just export it directly to .pdf format? That is what most printers will want. Why do you think you have to use Pages instead?
For a book you need to use the Word Processing mode to get Facing Pages and for that quantity of text, have it flow through the document.
To make a book of the standard required to print commercially is quite involved and not easy even for an experienced designer.
As I said before, you have to know what method you are going to use to print the book, and make it for that method.
If you are going to print thousands of copies of a 250 page book with full color process printing that means going to offset prrinting.
The first thing to do is to talk to a suitable printer and find out what they require. Unfortunately that will not be a Pages file or even a pdf file from Pages. If you have never done this before and have no experience of DTP and commercial printing, I strongly advise you to employ a qualified designer or have an on staff designer at the Printer do it for you.
It is not like creating material to print to your desktop printer. Especially when there is a lot of money involved and you do not want it to be a complete disaster.
Peter
Tom Gewecke wrote:
gloria132 wrote:
This revision was already in iBA
Then why not just export it directly to .pdf format? That is what most printers will want. Why do you think you have to use Pages instead?
Because iBooks Author has no Facing Pages, will export to RGB at who knows what resolution and my guess is all the text will not be plain black.
Everything is designed for on-screen viewing.
Also the latest version has gone downhill just like Pages 5.
Peter
Hi Gloria,
Publishing a book in print might not be so expensive. I have done this myself for a computer programming book. I wrote it in MS Word (wanted to do it with Pages 09, but missed several features like index, list of figures and such). Anyway if you can get a decent PDF export (might be doable from iBooksAuthor) you can then go with one of the print-on-demand publishers. I have personally used Amazon and its CreateSpace print publisher. But there are others as well.
In my case I needed to download a PDF plug-in from Create Space that allowed to check for the PDF requirements needed for printing. I could then upload the generated PDF to their site. You don't have to pay for anything upfront. You can either let them do the marketing and sale and they get their share from the revenue or you can buy your own book and sell it through whatever channels you want. Just to give you an idea: my book is a 300 page programming tutorial, printed in greyscale with graphics and screenshots on almost every page. The book has a glossy laminated full-colour cover. Raw cost of printing one copy is around $5 US. Having 5 copies printed and shipped to Europe cost me a total equivalent of roughly $50. You can also submit your book to be sold as an eBook.
Self-publishing is not so much about money/cost but about time! You need tons of time to get your book into a publishable state. Pages is quite a nice program for creating a novel but not so much for a technical publication. iBook Author is probably ok, and when you can get the export to PDF right might be the best tool for you.
---markus---
Thank you both for your replies. I've just learned the licensing of iBooks Author does not allow me to sell a book using their template outside of iBooks. Peter, I understand what you are saying about an experienced designer and working with the printer. Thank you for mentioning Facing Pages; that was a concern. I will check all of this out, now that I know what I am looking into.
Thank you.
Thank you ruggiero. This information gives me more to consider. I have a best selling coach in Hawaii but he isn't an Apple person. I will be doing my own marketing. My book has a lot of color and pics in it. I realized it would be quite expensive. Thank you for your pricing info. Now I have more thoughts to work with and will do some research. Thanks
PeterBreis0807 wrote:
Because iBooks Author has no Facing Pages, will export to RGB at who knows what resolution and my guess is all the text will not be plain black.
You are right, of course. Thanks for reminding me.
gloria132 wrote:
I've just learned the licensing of iBooks Author does not allow me to sell a book using their template outside of iBooks.
I don't think that is correct. It is not the template but the format. You are free to market your book any way you want in print or pdf or .epub format. It is only .ibooks format which must be sold in the Apple store.
ruggiero wrote:
Hi Gloria,
Publishing a book in print might not be so expensive. I have done this myself for a computer programming book. I wrote it in MS Word (wanted to do it with Pages 09, but missed several features like index, list of figures and such). Anyway if you can get a decent PDF export (might be doable from iBooksAuthor) you can then go with one of the print-on-demand publishers. I have personally used Amazon and its CreateSpace print publisher. But there are others as well.
In my case I needed to download a PDF plug-in from Create Space that allowed to check for the PDF requirements needed for printing. I could then upload the generated PDF to their site. You don't have to pay for anything upfront. You can either let them do the marketing and sale and they get their share from the revenue or you can buy your own book and sell it through whatever channels you want. Just to give you an idea: my book is a 300 page programming tutorial, printed in greyscale with graphics and screenshots on almost every page. The book has a glossy laminated full-colour cover. Raw cost of printing one copy is around $5 US. Having 5 copies printed and shipped to Europe cost me a total equivalent of roughly $50. You can also submit your book to be sold as an eBook.
Self-publishing is not so much about money/cost but about time! You need tons of time to get your book into a publishable state. Pages is quite a nice program for creating a novel but not so much for a technical publication. iBook Author is probably ok, and when you can get the export to PDF right might be the best tool for you.
---markus---
ruggiero
Life is much simpler when you are only printing a few copies in black ink which is done with glorified photocopiers.
The complications and cost escalate dramatically when you want to print thousands in 4 color process. That requires plates to be made for offset printing, and that requires considerable money, skill, training and experience in preparing the files correctly.
Even if you manage to successfully achieve a decent result, which you won't without the required knowledge and training, you are then in a difficult market for physical books. The vast majority of books lose money and end up dumped on the remaindered market.
Peter
How do I create a book template in Pages
