Sunday, January 22, 2012

iBooks Author straightjacket

I downloaded iBooks Author, considering using it to publish teaching materials. The license agreement, however, is rather a barrier. Particularly this section:

B. Distribution of your Work. As a condition of this License and provided you are in compliance with its terms, your Work may be distributed as follows: (i) if your Work is provided for free (at no charge), you may distribute the Work by any available means;
(ii) if your Work is provided for a fee (including as part of any subscription-based product or service), you may only distribute the Work through Apple and such distribution is subject to the following limitations and conditions: (a) you will be required to enter into a separate written agreement with Apple (or an Apple affiliate or subsidiary) before any commercial distribution of your Work may take place; and (b) Apple may determine for any reason and in its sole discretion not to select your Work for distribution. 

So, if you just plan to make your work freely available (like this blog), that's fine. But if you want to sell it at all, then you've got to create it, submit it to Apple, and hope that they will sell it for you. If they refuse, well, you can always give it away.

3 comments:

Q Higuchi said...

That indeed is the puzzling bit, isn't it - 'free speech' in double entendre. There was some relevant discussion/chat on it in the latest 'This Week in Tech' if you are interested:
http://twit.tv/show/this-week-in-tech/337
(first 1/2 hour)

My take is, like or not, as the world progresses educational stuff goes free, and Apple is going in that direction. Otherwise the iBooks store will be full of porn and games, as has always been the case with tech advancement, and they don't want to handle that.

For now, I am simply thinking, Wow now I can put my classroom presentation stuff in iBooks which will be on my iPad, which will be the only thing I need to carry! (Before you ask - No, Keynote for iPad is not good enough for my purposes.)

Brett said...

I wanna know when that iBook comes out!

The Ridger, FCD said...

Heaven forbid anyone should make a dime off of Apple without them getting their cut.