How To Use The New Pages ePub Feature To Create An iBook

Would you like to create your own iBook?  If you are a mac user and also have the latest iWork Productivity Suite (Currently iWork ’09) then you have some powerful tools at your disposal, but there are some things you will want to know before you begin in order to save yourself a lot of time and frustration.

Apple recently updated it’s iWork ’09 suite so you could export documents to the ePub format which is the format that iBooks uses.  ePub is an open ebook standard produced by the International Digital Publishing Forum.  Here are some of the advantages to exporting your documents in the ePub format:

• Optimized for iBooks features such as changes in text size, font, and orientation (rotating your device between landscape or portrait).
• Support for video embedded in a document.
• Support for iBooks notes.
• Navigation using an automatically generated Table of Contents.

There are, however some limitations that you will definitely want to be aware of before you begin using the new Pages to ePub export features. Here is the content that is not supported by the new Pages to ePub feature:

• Smart-fields.
• Master/Background objects.
• Headers and footers.
• Floating graphics.
• Footnotes (converted to endnotes).
• Columns.
• Comments.
• Some image effects such as shadows.
• Images beyond the 11MB of un-encoded image data allocation per chapter.

Beyond the limitations, however it’s a great feature that was added to Pages because it makes the creating of an iBook very nice and easy.  Here is how you can create an iBook in three easy steps.

How To Create an iBook From Pages In 3 Easy Steps

Step 1: Preparing Your Pages Document

The first thing you need to do before you you can create an iBook from Pages is to get your document prepared properly.  Here are some guidelines:

• The Pages document must have been created using a word processing template.
• Review your document to be certain that appropriate paragraph styles are applied to all chapters, titles, headings, and subheadings in your document.
• If you want additional items to appear in the table of contents generated by the ePub file, make sure they are also styled with the correct paragraph style. Then open the Document inspector and click TOC (table of contents). Select all of the paragraph styles that you want to appear in the TOC, and then click Update.
• Generate a Table of Contents in your current document to verify that it lists only what you expect it to
• Reformat any images, shapes, or other objects in your document to make them inline objects.

Step 2:  Exporting Your Document To ePub Format

1. Choose Share > Export.
2. Select “ePub” from the options shown at the top of the Export window.
3. Fill out the following fields:

Title: Type the name of the book.

Author: Type the author’s name.

Genre: Select a genre for the book from the pop-up menu, or type a new genre into the Genre field.

Step 3: Transferring Your ePub Document To iBooks On Your iPad

1. Connect your iPad to your computer, and then open iTunes on your computer.
2. Drag the ePub file to Books, listed on the left side of the iTunes window, under Library.
3. Sync your device with iTunes

Now You can enjoy your new iBook that you just created using the new export feature in Pages (iWork ’09).

And that’s pretty much it! As long as you remember to adhere to the guidelines, then you should be creating iBooks from your Pages documents in no time at all.

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