Alison introduced me to a $4.50 iPad app yesterday called Creative Book Builder which allows you to create eBooks/iBooks on your iPad. I have focused in the past on solutions that start on the Windows platform because our standard operating environment is Windows and our teachers and corporate staff have Dell laptops issued to them.

On the Mac there is an application called pages (the iPad version can't produce an eBook) you can also use the more expensive indesign from Adobe to create an eBook.

So, back to the Creative Book Builder. This application lets you import documents from Google Docs (only Google Docs at the moment) and if you are thinking of creating an eBook of more than a few paragraphs, I would open an account and upload your manuscript to that location for import. Why? in Creative Book Builder (CBB) you add elements like text, image, links, sound, video and more one block at a time which will become tedious.

I would create your document with headings and images and links, upload it to Google docs, import it into CBB and then start polishing by adding videos and audio.

Importing video and images from your iPad into your book is a snap. Use screenchomp from techsmith to narrate a series of screen shots explaining an application, or puppet pals to add characters to your play backdrops.

As you can import more than one document into a book, you may consider splitting your document into Chapters before importing it.

Once that is done you can preview and publish. When you publish, you can just leave it on your iPad, send it to dropbox, email it, send it back to Google docs or upload it to an ftp server.

Of course you can add a book cover and in the book properties I noticed that book ids were generated for you, which would make uploading to itunes and itunesU easier.

Are there any negatives? Not really for the casual user or someone preparing a book for delivery in class or book about their holiday. You can't really get under the hood and work with fixed layouts and change the viewport size - however these are fairly labour intensive and you would have to have a good reason to go down that path.

Rating? 4.5 out of 5 - Plus it does work on an iPad One..

This entry was posted on October 5, 2011 at 7:07 AM and has received 754 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.