IBooks Author on the web Archives

Today, Apple emailed iBooks Author users to inform them that the iBooks Author Mac app is being discontinued on July 1st. The app was released on January 19, 2012 and last updated to version 2.6.1 on September 24, 2018.

Thank you for being a member of the iBooks Author community. We have some news to share with you about the future of book creation.

Two years ago we brought book creation into Pages. With key features such as the ability to work on iPad, collaborate with others on a shared book, draw with Apple Pencil, and more, Pages is a great platform for making books.

As we focus our efforts on Pages, ‌iBooks‌ Author will no longer be updated and will soon be removed from the Mac App Store. You can continue to use ‌iBooks‌ Author on macOS 10.15 and earlier, and books previously published to Apple Books will remain available. If you have ‌iBooks‌ Author books you’d like to import into Pages for further editing, we have a book import feature coming to Pages soon. — Apple

Juli Clover for MacRumors:

Apple says that ‌iBooks Author will continue to be available on macOS 10.15 and earlier for those who have already installed the apps, and books that were published to Apple Books will remain available.

In the future, Apple plans to add an import feature to Pages to allow books to be imported into the app, and a support document covers details on how users can transition from the ‌iBooks‌ Author app to the Pages app.

MacDailyNews Take: R.I.P., iBooks Author. Long live Pages!

Here’s a quick tip to remember in case you ever need to access assets from an iBooks Author project to place into InDesign (or another program).

Like EPUBs, iBooks Author files (.IBA files), are really compressed ZIP archives, that you can open like a folder. You only need to uncompress them first to get at the contents. To do this, first change the extension from .iba to .zip.

Then double-click on the ZIP file in the Finder to uncompress it.

Inside the resulting folder will be all the images, sound files, and videos used in the iBook. Just remember to duplicate the .iba file first, if you might need it for any reason.

Bonus tip: Look inside the uncompressed ZIP folder and you will find a folder named “QuickLook”.

Inside it is a PDF named “Preview.pdf”, which is a PDF version of several pages of the eBook.

Michela Di Stefano is a digital trainer and Adobe Certified Instructor, the founder of Studio 361° , and has been involved in the graphics industry for over 25 years. She focuses on Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, Acrobat, PubCoder, Twixl Publisher, Mag+, and iBooksAuthor and founded the Digital Publishing Explorers.

Latest posts by Michela Di Stefano (see all)

Four major book publishers have filed suit against the Internet Archive for copyright violations relating to the Open Library project, setting the stage for a major legal fight over one of the internet’s longest-running ebook archives.

Launched in 2006, Internet Archive’s Open Library allows users to borrow ebooks scanned from physical copies, according to a theory called “controlled digital lending” (or CDL) that limits how many times a single scan can be borrowed at once. The project expanded in March with the launch of the National Emergency Library, which suspended waitlists in response to the global pandemic, making all scanned books immediately accessible to anyone with an account.

Crucially, the project circumvents the typical licensing restrictions used by conventional libraries. Open Library’s ebooks are scanned from physical copies rather than purchased in their digital form, so the project never enters into a licensing agreement with the publisher.

Still, the four publishers — Hachette, Penguin Random House, Wiley, and HarperCollins — allege that the entire project is a wholesale copyright violation scheme. “Without any license or any payment to authors or publishers, [the Internet Archive] scans print books, uploads these illegally scanned books to its servers, and distributes verbatim digital copies of the books in whole via public-facing websites,” the plaintiffs allege. “With just a few clicks, any Internet-connected user can download complete digital copies of in-copyright books from [the] defendant.“

It’s a long-standing complaint from publishers and authors’ groups. In April, the Authors Guild circulated an open letter raising similar concerns. “You cloak your illegal scanning and distribution of books behind the pretense of magnanimously giving people access to them,” the letter reads. “But giving away what is not yours is simply stealing, and there is nothing magnanimous about that.”

Reached for comment, Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle called the lawsuit “disappointing.”

“As a library, the Internet Archive acquires books and lends them, as libraries have always done,” Kahle told The Verge. “This supports publishing and authors and readers. Publishers suing libraries for lending books — in this case, protected digitized versions, and while schools and libraries are closed — is not in anyone’s interest.”

“We hope this can be resolved quickly,” he continued.

Update June 1st, 2:32PM ET:Updated with comment from Brewster Kahle.