Apple held a big product announcement the other day, which was of particular interest to me since I’ve been working on a book with a partner, and we’ve been stumbling through the process ourselves. Rumor had it that Apple was introducing an application that would make ebook publishing easier, and last Thursday, that’s exactly what they did. Well, kinda.
The application is iBooks Author, and it’s free from the Mac App Store, so that’s pretty cool in itself. Even though it’s designed to be used only for textbook creation, there’s a lot of “wink-wink, nudge-nudge” stuff going on with the app, in that we know we can make it do what we need it to do. But there’s this big hoopla going on about the licensing agreement included with the app, particularly this part right here:
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.
There’s been lots of pontificating on whether or not this was an overzealous lawyer or just Apple digging its heels in just like Amazon does with the Kindle, but I’ve got a different question.
I’ve been writing a book (well, several, actually) using Scrivener, because I love the way it functions. Let’s say I output the text to a Kindle file, and get the book published in the Amazon store, and then the book is happily found on Kindles wherever they happen to roam. Then let’s say that I output the text and import it into iBooks Author, add a bunch of videos and what-not, then push it to the iBookstore as a special “iPad-only” version of the book, does that count against me?
The way I see it (and I’m not a lawyer), I’d be in the clear. The EULA talks about the distribution of your work, and since iBooks Author was not the tool I used to create the Kindle version, I’m good — plus, I have files dating back prior to Thursday that prove the book was actually created in Scrivener, not in iBooks Author.
But am I looking into this too much? I suppose I’ll just have to wait and see.