The lovely Vikki Chowney showed us just how nifty creating an Blurb book out of your Instagram photos was, and now you can make gorgeous eBooks that can be viewed on your iPad, too.
Rendered, full-resolution versions of your books will be optimised with the iBooks app for the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, and Blurb say they can be ordered like any of their books. They do all of the techy work and convert your book to an iPad friendly version, so you don’t have to. Nice, eh?
Blurb say their eBooks “cost less than a fancy cup of coffee” as they cash in at only £1.49, which isn’t too shabby. You can currently convert any books you’ve already created with Blurb into an eBook, and even better, you can make you eBook available to sell to others - which means you’ll obviously have to set the mark-up for your book if you plan on making a profit, eh?
Now, this all sounds very nice, but I’m not quite sure about it.
When I think “optimised for the iPad”, I think of something like a full-page, interactive magazine. Like iPad-versions of magazines and newspapers tend to be. However, Blurb’s iBook app has your books look literally like a book.
Also, as much as I love the photos from Instagram and the fact that Blurb are being forward thinking in their embracing of eBooks and apps - why just the iPad? Why is there not an iBook app for Android, too? I’d love to play around with it on, say, the Samsung Galaxy Tab or the Motorola Xoom, but no-can-do.
All in all, the eBooks from Blurb seem to be quite cool, and for less than £2, it seems having a iPad-friendly book is well worth it. Let’s just hope we see an Android and more interactive version available soon!
blurb.com/ebook