So, based on discussions with a number of local comics people, especially in the wake of the recent ComiXology Amazon buyout, and the brouhaha over the removal of purchase options from ComiXology’s app, I decided to put together a primer on how to build EPUB comic books, like the ones I’m doing, for folks who are interested in getting onto the iBooks platform.

Now, I’ve never used ComiXology, so my opinions / comparisons are somewhat secondhand, but here’s the way iBooks works.

• You, the creator do all the work authoring the files – Apple doesn’t alter, fix, edit or optimise them.
• You, the creator set the price – Apple doesn’t discount, give away or in any other way mess with your retail price.
• You, the creator get 70% of the cover price.
• You, the creator can build the preview version of your book, and the iBooks reader app will automatically display a “buy & download the full version” link on a blank last page added.
• You, the creator upload your own choice of example screenshots.
• iBooks / iTunes store tech support staff are brilliant – super helpful, super keen, and keep you in the loop if there’s a problem that needs to be fixed at Apple’s end.
• As far as I know, you can pull your book at any time, and it will go off sale (no contracts granting Apple x-number of years of sales), though those who’ve bought it already will continue to be able to download it.
• You get to choose if your book has DRM or not. Personally, I do put DRM on my files, because it ensures the reading experience is the one I created (given I use a lot of WebKit specific design and scripting) – locking the reader to iBooks on a Mac or iPad. Non-DRMed files are still watermarked to the buyer’s iTunes store account.

With comics, you’re producing what’s called a “fixed layout EPUB”, which in the iBooks reader app means your page art is edge to edge, and the controls are displayed differently. The authoring tools necessary are a text editor, and any image editing apps you already use.

A Fixed Layout EPUB is basically a website. Each page of your book is a separate webpage, with content entered using HTML, and CSS to define how everything looks. You define the size of the viewport to be the size of your page, and then you can use positioning values to place things exactly where you want them.

It’s web design, without the ambiguities of working with multiple browser engines / window sizes etc. Better yet, becuase it’s a walled garden of WebKit, you can use lots of WebKit specific CSS that hasn’t been ratified as part of CSS3 yet.

The Merchant Process

In order to sell books on iBooks you have to do the following:

• Obtain a US Tax ID.
  • One option is to get an ITIN – this is long and expensive, requiring sending a passport to the US consulate for ID verification, plus document fees.
  • The second option is quick and cheap – call the IRS in America and get an EIN, as documented here. This takes about 2 weeks for everything to work its way through so that your EIN is recognised by Apple’s systems.
  • NOTE: income earned via the iTunes / iBooks store is taxed in America at (from memory) a 30% rate, which you can then claim back from the Australian Tax Office as a credit under international treaties against double-taxation.
• Sign up for an iTunes Merchant account to sell on the iBooks store.
  • Free accounts can offer only free books, but don’t require you giving Apple banking & US Tax information.
  • Paid accounts require you to give Apple your bank details (so they can pay you your residuals), and the aforementioned US Tax information, buy you don’t have to pay for the account itself
• (Depreciated – this program has now closed, and book authoring doesn’t require a dev account) Sign Up for an Apple Developer account so you can download tools and access the developer support forums. The type of account you need is the Safari Developer Program – it’s free, and gives you write access to all the forums which are to do with iBooks, and WebKit. You can read all the other forums. Needless to say, these are all NDA covered.
• Upload your file, excerpt, screenshots and metadata (pricing, territories etc) using iTunes Producer. iTP will preflight your files, identify any problems, like code bugs, and tell you what they are so you can fix them.
• Initial approval usually takes about 10 working days, and updates take around the same amount of time.

The Authoring Process

My first recommendation is to read the lessons on R. Scott John’s blog, starting with:

• How to Create Fixed-Layout iBooks, Part 1

…and ending with part 7.

Then read:

• iBooks Tutorial 3.0 Update
• iBooks Image Limit Increased To 3.2 Million Pixels

That should give you all the information you need to get the basic thing up and running. Some additional tips:

• iBooks on the Mac allows you to direct load your EPUB working files to the iPad for preview and debug.
• iBooks Author doesn’t currently do paginated books, with zoomable art.

Any questions, hit me up in the comments. Oh and one final thing – if this is of use, go buy a copy of The Metaning on iTunes. Researching & collecting all this information together took most of my time over a couple of weeks, and there’s a lot of garbage information out there, or information that’s only available via paid sources – the “buy my ebook on how to make ebooks” type thing. Getting a few book sales would be a nice payback.

If this article was of use, a donation would help support my projects.

This week saw the bumpin of the UWS sculpture. A pretty momentous event. It was the first time I’d hired a ute, and done the whole thing myself, without a professional mover involved.

The whole process was remarkably trouble free. The whole task took around 3 days. First bringing the sculpture to site, and situating it in place, then returning the next day to add the leaves, then a third day to add a leaf that had come home for repairs. Here’s hoping the work sells.

BØN541 v2.0 was exhibited at the UWS campus in 2014, though sadly it met with a disaster after the exhibition had concluded – being knocked flat by wild weather, resulting in irreparable damage.

Exhibited Work:

• BØN541 v2.0

BØN541 v2.0 was created for the University of Western Sydney Sculpture Award & Exhibition 2014. It’s constructed from computer motherboards, and braided stainless steel hosepipe over a stainless steel armature.

The work was supported with a material sponsorship by Convoluted Technology Pty Ltd, who supplied the braid.

This work has since been disassembled, and its materials recovered.

(more…)

Everything is finished. Hard to imagine, but working up to the last minute, everything was ready. There were some hiccups with getting the branches connected after braiding, but I eventually discovered a way of connecting them that avoided actually cutting the braid. The first wrap up of the braid around the branches didn’t quite work out the way I wanted, and ended up with big knots over the joins. So, I unwrapped and re-wrapped, creating a much leaner, smoother appearance.

Work continues on the UWS piece. It’s hard work, slow work, hot work and dusty work, but it feels like it’s coming together. The branches are being attached and the skin is going on. It requires significant precision, without much room for error. With luck, the final two branches will go on Tuesday, and that’s the serious work out of the way.

Longer diary entries will be along once this major work is out of the way.

Images from my tour of Gibbs Farm in New Zealand.

A week of travel and deal doing.

So in going to get my stainless steel on Monday, I hit upon an idea to call the makers of a welder I’d been thinking about a year or so back. I spoke to the owner of the company, ad he mentioned a model that wasn’t on their website, their crappy un-updated website. Hello. So I suggested that perhaps he’d consider a swap – a new website for a welding machine.

So, on Tuesday I went out to their head office, and picked up the welding machine, and since it was near UWS, made a quick site visit. Wednesday it was off to New Zealand, where I visited Gibbs Farm.

This was a real pilgrimage – being able to stand next to, and touch giant works by Anish Kapoor & Richard Serra.

The other two days there ere spent doing touristy stuff – walking around Auckland, and taking ferry tours.

Sunday was dedicated to getting the electrical supplies necessary to get the welder up and running. All going well, I should be able to begin next week.

Disaster!

The armature I was building for the top half of the UWS piece has turned out to be a failure. The material wasn’t up to the weight demands, and sagged to the point it wasn’t viable.

So, with 3 weeks to go, one of which will have 4 days going to New Zealand and back, I’ve got to find another solution. I’m thinking it’s going to be stainless steel pipe, cut with lots of slots, then bent and welded. back together.

I’ve priced a small welder that’ll run off domestic house power, and which should do the job. So in the 2 days before I go away, I’ve got to get stainless steel organised, get a welder organised and gear up for a new and expensive addition to my practice.

Argh.

The base of my UWS sculpture is complete, and the new, responsive version of my website has gone live.

The other news is that my second review has gone up, this time for the Adonit Jot Touch 4.