Importing the Text and Images of Your E-Book

When you open iBooks Author, you’re shown six templates, as shown in Figure 7-1. Decide which one best suits your project.

After you choose a template, you see that iBooks Author has prepopulated it with a chapter, a section, and a page. The chapter, which is the highest-level element, can have multiple sections, and sections can have multiple pages. You can add pages directly to chapters, with no sections, if you prefer.

You can see the chapter, section, and page in Figure 7-2. The three elements are nested on the left side of the screen, to show their positions in the hierarchy.

If you choose to, you can write your e-book directly in iBooks Author by adding new pages and typing in their text boxes. You’ve likely already written your e-book manuscript (or at least part of it), though, so now you can import it.

The app lets you import files created in either the Microsoft Word or Apple Pages word processor, and it preserves both text and images (though you may notice stylistic changes, made during the import process).

To import your manuscript into iBooks Author, follow these steps:

1. Choose Insert⇒Chapter from Pages or Word Document, as shown in Figure 7-3.

A Finder window appears.

2. Browse your computer for your manuscript file, select it, and then click Insert.

You see two chapter layouts to choose between.

3. Click one of the chapter layouts to select it.

4. Select the Preserve Document Paragraph Style check box.

5. Click Choose to confirm your chapter layout selection.

The dialog box closes, and your manuscript is imported. Note that it may take a minute or two for a full-length manuscript to be imported.

After your manuscript is successfully imported, iBooks Author may warn you that fonts have been changed or that the formatting has been removed, for example. Review these warnings so that you know which elements of your e-book to double-check.

After the import operation, you should find all your text and images transferred into the iBooks Author file. You may need to make alterations, such as adding or removing chapter and section pages.

Review every page of the e-book you create in iBooks Author to ensure that it’s correct. Pay special attention to the start of chapters or any pages with images.

If the source document contains several (unwanted) paragraph styles and needs to be cleaned up, follow the preceding steps, but leave Preserve Document Paragraph Style deselected in Step 4. iBooks Author automatically renders all paragraphs in the default style (no indent and with a blank space between paragraphs).