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I've read that Apple's proprietary .ibooks format is almost similar to .epub but I can't seem to find the documentation on it anywhere. Yes, I do have a developer account.

I need to compare both ibooks and epub format to see the differences.

Kara
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eozzy
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3 Answers3

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I know I'm late to the party here, but I've been doing a bit of research into epub3 and ibooks lately.

So, the think to keep top of mind is that these formats are just collections of HTML documents zipped together into a package with a folder of assets (images and stylesheets for the most part). Yes, ibooks and epub3 are very similiar, but you need to do some work to get one to masquerade as another. To get an ibook file into an epub3 reader, you'd need to do a lot of work to scrub all the proprietary CSS and Plist features out of it.

In theory it would be much easier to get an epub3 book into an ibook format, but I've yet to successfully do it.

Anyway, you can see a breakdown of the two formats (epub3 and ibooks) in my blog post about the ibooks file format paired with the experimental ebooks git repository I setup on GitHub. I unzipped each one, created an exploded view of the directory structure, and then pretty printed the XML and HTML for easier viewing.

Kris Walker
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There is a document "iBookstore Asset Guide", that is only available in iTunes Connect when logged in with a publisher account. It's not directly about the .ibooks-format, the iBooks Author creates, but about iBooks-specifics of publications for the iBookstore.

This document provides delivery information for all accepted media and files for the iBookstore. It describes the basics of EPUB structure and design, as well as guidelines specific to each type of EPUB and Multi-Touch books.

I can't give you a link, as sharing seems to be not allowed:

All information, documentation, and examples must not be shared external to Apple

Someone might provide a download of some kind for some reason at some place ;o)

The ibooks-format is not "open", is generated by iBooks Author and not really manually modifiable. To see, what iBooks Author is capable of, simply use it or its documentation. A simple answer is: iBooks Author is good for simple, quickly and easily created fixed-layout iBooks. If you want any special functionality, like JavaScript-interaction, animation etc, stick to the epub-format. iBooks allows the use of some epub3-features while the epub-files must be formatted epub2-style (content.opf, toc.ncx, html-files). The iBookstore Asset Guide and the provided samples are a good entrypoint for that.

Felix Lieb
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There are no actually full documentation 'bout .ibooks format. But you can read smth like aroud about it.

Publishing with iBooks Author iBooks: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) On the Proprietary Nature of the iBooks Author File Format iBooks Author, a nice tool but..

iBlogger
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