How Companies Can Use iBooks 2 To Engage with Customers

January 19, 2012 4:11 pm
By Justin Ferrell

This morning, Apple held an event in New York City to announce two awesome new products: iBooks 2 and iBooks Author. Essentially, these two services bring the power and beauty that was only available to Apps to the world of eBooks.

Steve Jobs said in his biography that the next market he wanted to disrupt was that of textbooks, and Apple has done just that. Apple has made it dead simple to create and share content in the form of completely interactive books. But what do these tools mean for us, outside of the education spectrum?

iBooks 2

iBooks 2 is a free download for all iPads. It gives you the ability to buy and read textbooks right on your device. The first time someone opens the App Store on their iPad, they are always prompted to download iBooks, so most people have it installed and will receive notification that the update is available. With this in mind, it’s safe to assume that the majority of people with iPads will have this update and will be able to take full advantage of this new interactivity, including (but not limited to):

Interactive Video and
Elite Game Streamer

Text
Beautiful graphics
Audio and video clips
Portability from iWork and Microsoft Office
“Review” functionality

iBooks Author

iBooks Author is available to ~~all Mac users with access to Mac App Store~~ at no charge (EDIT: A commenter pointed out that iBooks Author is actually only available to Mac App Store users running OSX 10.7, though some users have managed to circumvent this restriction). Not only is it free, it’s 100% drag-and-drop, with built-in templates and the ability to add additional functionality using HTML5 and Javascript. Using the iBooks Author, it would be no problem for a company to make things like:

Beautiful coffee table picture books
Digital cookbooks
Interactive brochures
Interactive menus

iBooks 2 is a new platform that will make it super easy for companies to take their content and make it interactive in a way that would not have been possible before. When it comes to content marketing, iBooks 2 is a powerful new tool that companies can use to tell stories and engage with customers.

How will you be using iBooks 2?

Tags: App Store, App Stores, Apps, content marketing, iBooks, iBooks 2, iBooks Author, iPad, iTunes

Categorised in: Applications, Content, Mobile Marketing, Thoughts, Useful Stuff

This post was written by Justin Ferrell

8 Comments

Doug Ellison says:

January 20, 2012 at 2:46 pm

“iBooks Author is available to all Mac users with access to Mac App Store at no charge” – Not true. It’s ONLY available to those who use OS X 10.7. This is an artificial constraint imposed by Apple as people have already hacked the plist file within it and run the app on 10.6.

“Using the iBooks Author, it would be no problem for a company to make things like:….Beautiful coffee table picture books” Also not true. Under the terms of the EULA, you can not sell anything created using the Author app outside of the iBook store. The wording is very specific and clear. It’s just making an iBook – it’s ANYTHING created using the iBook Author application . Thus, you couldn’t – for example – make a coffee table book, save as PDF and have it sent to a printing firm. That would breach the EULA.
- Justin Ferrell says:
  
  January 20, 2012 at 2:57 pm
  
  Thanks for the heads up about the OSX 10.7 constraint. I saw that after I wrote the post, and didn’t get a chance to correct it.
  
  As far as the coffee table book goes, I don’t think that my choice of words accurately conveyed what I meant. I didn’t mean a physical “paper and ink” book. The idea that I was referring to was to make the digital equivalent of a coffee table book. It could contain photography about the subject, additional insights, audio commentary, etc.
  
  According to Apple though, it looks like the works CAN be shared in other places, so long as they fit a specific criteria (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5071#3)
  
  Thanks for reading!
Joe says:

February 2, 2012 at 2:45 am

Thanks for the tips, I had to give it a try.

I just launched an iBook textbook I was working on a Self Help book for Emotional Brain Training ( http://www.ebt.org ). It is really amazing what you can do with the iBooks 2 platform.
- Justin Ferrell says:
  
  February 2, 2012 at 2:39 pm
  
  It’s definitely an incredible platform. Have you had a chance to check out any of the textbooks? Some of them are really cool.
Quim says:

April 11, 2012 at 6:58 am

It will be a great thing if Ibooks could be used as a company brochure creator with possible updates. I suppose that should be a different shelf for that, no it is not very useful to look through apps market as a brochure is not really an app.

I will like to be sure if I can offer my clients to make they company or products brochures using Ibooks and distribute for Ipad users.
- Justin Ferrell says:
  
  April 12, 2012 at 2:09 pm
  
  You could definitely build in some dynamic information, you would just have to make sure that you can access it via the HTML tools built into iBooks Author.
  
  Thanks for reading!
Brandon says:

July 11, 2012 at 7:44 am

Found this article and discussion late, but agree with the point that iBooks can be very engaging for an audience, especially if it is replacing delivery that has typically been dry and underserved. Here’s a blog post showing what we learned in using iBooks to replace PC-based learning:
http://www.bottomlineperformance.com/hands-on-guide-how-we-used-ibooks-author-to-replace-pc-based-elearning/
- Justin Ferrell says:
  
  July 11, 2012 at 9:22 am
  
  Thanks for reading, Brandon. I really enjoyed your post as well, especially the bits about Keynote widgets and using HTML5.