can i create an ibook for personal use

The way to publish a book created in iBook Author for only a few people is to go under the "Share" tab of the top menu bar. In the Send via email, you have three choices, iBook, iBook Author, and pdf. The file you choose appears in a default Yahoo email that you can send. Drag the file out to the desktop and send it however you want. I use this to collaborate with a co author, placing the iBook Author file in Dropbox, because it is a big file.

Once your iBook is completely finished and tested you can export to an ibook file. I'm not on my MacBook at the moment, but I'm guessing it's something like File -> Export. Choose ibook (as opposed to PDF) as the export format.

If you've used a lot of rich media this file could be rather large - too large to email, for example.

So an option would be to create a DropBox account, upload the ibook file to that account, and then only send the DropBox link to the people you would like to access the book.

However, once somebody has downloaded the ibook file I don't think there's any way to stop them sharing it with other people using the same method.

Note that the IBA licence agreement only allows you to give away the book for free using this method. You have to use iBooks store if you plan to charge for it.