Comic Writer Tries Out iBooks Author

Apple's new iBooks Author application enables users to make interactive iBooks on their Mac. Apple says the software allows authors to make "stunning iBooks textbooks, cookbooks, history books, picture books, and more for iPad." Richard Stevens, author of the Diesel Sweeties webcomic, has expanded that list of possibilities to include comic strips.

Diesel Sweeties author Robert Stevens writes of the project:

I had a few insomniac hours this weekend and did a little experiment:

Waking Up With the Diesel Sweeties is a tiny little free ebook for the iPad. It contains all my comics from last month with a few tweaks, formatted in iBooks Author. This version only works on the iPad. It's not in the iBookstore, so you'll need to download the file and sync it to your iPad.

Stevens is offering the iBook free via download from his website, not via the iBookstore, but it is fairly simple to acquire the book:

- Click the book link while using Mobile Safari on your iPad.
- Download to your desktop machine and email it to yourself to open in iBooks.
- Toss it in your Dropbox and open it in iBooks from there.
- Add it to your iTunes library and sync the book to your iPad

The author says he is considering how to combine his twelve years of comics into one huge collection, and appears to be interested in iBooks Author as a potential production device for his ongoing comic collections as well.

The Waking Up With the Diesel Sweeties iBook is available from the Diesel Sweeties website. [Direct Link]

iBooks Author is available free in the Mac App Store. [App Store]