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What are the options available to educational content creators and publishers who wants to get educational books or other content created/published for iPad?

  • looking for technical as well as business options
  • may eventually require multiple Q&A.
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inkling.com might be a good place for content creator to start. Hopefully other services like it will spring up. – Jin Kim Feb 1 at 19:33

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Adobe InDesign CS5 now includes the ability to generate ePub files, there are also many PDF -> ePub converters around (TUAW linked to a few of them recently).

The individual ePub files can be added to iTunes and synced to your iPad.

Once your content is in ePub format, you could then submit it to Apple for inclusion in the iTunes Book Store if that's the way you want to go, otherwise just publish the ePub file for use as described above.

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Strictly speaking Pages doesn't need to be able to create universal ePubs but iPad-optimized ePubs.

Not that I like the idea, but I can see it happening.

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Well, but that's Pages '09. We should be seeing a '10 update soon, I hope. And nobody has yet really been able to take a look at what's in the Pages app for the iPad, beyond those tantalizing glimpses in promotional videos.

One great thing about apps from the App Store is that developers tend to upgrade them rather frequently, and the upgrades are available immediately as free downloads. So even if we don't see, for example, "Save as EPUB" in the Pages app v.1.0, it could be added easily enough a little way down the road.

I expect we will see this also with the overall iPhone OS as it moves from v.3.2 to v.4.0 later this year. There have been strong suggestions from a number of sources that things like direct printer support will be coming. We may or may not see them on launch day.

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I can not conceive of an excuse Apple could have NOT to equip the richtext Pages application on the iPad with "Save as ePub..." option. NONE. Presumably they're hoarding announcing that function for just prior to iPad's appearance in April.

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That would be very nice. Mmmm. – Fraser Speirs♦ Feb 7 at 22:36
Yes, well... on second thoughts, I am the one unable to conceive such an excuse; Apple may well have quite a few of their own. Pages '09 app is strangely conservative where dynamic output is concerned, geared towards linearly static richtext flow, and very little besides (PDF and save-as-Word options; not even HTML). So the key question is whether iPad's iWork apps are an updated/ extended suite, or merely Cocoa Touch ports.... – ianf Feb 9 at 10:46
After further deliberations with like-minded others, I have reluctantly come to accept that the Pages '09 can not be used for ePub creation. It is strictly 2-dim-presentational, not n-dim hypertextual one required (at the very least) for internal e-book cross-linkage, navigation, indices, etc. That sounds more like a case for a brand-new app, than adding/extending functionality to the present flat richtext-only version. Also see: ebooktest.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/… – ianf Feb 13 at 9:41
This just happened. Check support.apple.com/kb/HT4168 - which now says: Optimized for iBooks features such as changes in text size, font, and orientation (rotating your device between landscape or portrait). Support for video embedded in a document. Support for iBooks notes. Navigation using an automatically generated Table of Contents. Note that some content is not supported by the ePub file format standard and will be removed from your document when exporting to ePub: Smart-fields. Master/Background objects. Headers and footers. Floating graphics. Footnotes (converted to endnotes). – DanG Aug 27 at 2:24
Thank you for stating the obvious and do see the [pre-release] date of my comment. I note that while desktop Pages '09 has indeed been refined to write out ePub (in effect convert a richtext document to an ePub READABLE by iBooks rather than CREATE a source hypertext that will become kosher ePub readable anywhere), missing are any signs of iPad Pages able to save ePub straight on the device. Instead, one has to export/ sync the doc from desktop to iPad first. Also, current ePub standard does not permit embedding video which Pages apparently does. So, a stop-gap solution at best. – ianf Aug 31 at 17:06
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If the software on the device allows to upload user-created ePub files, that would be the way to do it.

You can find lots of HOWTOS on that subject on the internet.

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It is not yet clear if Apple will limit the books available on their iBooks store to their content/publisher partners and how/if ePub format ebooks can be distributed via iTunes U. – Jin Kim Feb 1 at 15:33
Bear in mind that the app platform is there. There is nothing to stop another app on the device handling ePubs however it likes. – marramgrass Feb 1 at 19:32
This is a very good point. Hense inkling.com or there may even be more generic ePub reader like Stanza with hooks to consume any ePub docs. – Jin Kim Feb 1 at 19:34
Not to be snarky, but "you can find lots of HOWTOS on that subject on the internet" is the quintessential web-age equivalent of "on a clear disk you can search forever." – ianf Feb 6 at 10:37

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