Look out for "iBooks Author"

[stevenehrbar]

The iBooks Author EULA says any file you create with it must be sold through Apple, and not anywhere else.

Comments

[archangelbeth]

Arguably, this is no different from Smashwords saying, "If you convert a story through our Meatgrinder, you can only sell that conversion on Smashwords. Don't take the .mobi file we generate and upload it to Amazon!" They don't care if you take the base Word file and upload it to Amazon's converter -- just that you don't take the output of their conversion program and use it elsewhere.

From what I've heard, though, the iBooks Author language is at least confusing to the layman (and entirely possibly legally ambiguous as well!) as to whether this means "we have put fancy bells and whistles in here that you may not reverse engineer" or if it means "you can't have a non-bells-and-whistles version selling anywhere, either!" So some lawyer needs to be smacked upside the head.

From where I sit, it's pretty pointless to me either way. It's all about the multi-media bells and whistles, and I just wanna write straight text -- and Smashwords gets me into the iBookstore just fine.