Two weeks after Apple unveiled its iBooks Author program for designing interactive e-books, template king Jumsoft was there with its first set of iBooks Author templates, dubbed Book Palette. Jumsoft has now expanded that collection to 25 with the announcement of five new designs that offer “ … upmarket design quality at a reasonable price.”
The five new templates include the crisp Decorum, the elegant Royal Title, and the colorful Taste Buds designs.
All 25 templates contain the full set of standard sections and page layouts provided in the iBooks Author app, including covers, chapter pages, text pages, tables of contents, glossary pages and more. A wide selection of text styles for different book elements ensures a striking yet consistent look for each template.
Most elements in Book Palette can be easily recolored, moved, or removed. Users can type or paste in their own text, add and remove text boxes, and change the fonts. Stock images can be replaced with users’ own photos or pictures. Gallery, video and other widgets featured in iBooks Author also have a matching look in Book Palette, and the app allows users to adapt these elements to their liking.
Book Palette is available in the Mac App Store for $9.99, and requires:
• Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later
• iBooks Author
• 75.3 MB
Of course, we should point out that one can make their own templates in iBooks Author (see: http://support.apple.com/kb/PH2762?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US). Having said that, getting 25 new templates is probably worth the $10 if you can actually use one or two of them. Time is money and it takes time (plus talent) to create attractive and useful templates.
Great to see people developing more tools to bring ebook design closer to print book design. Sorely needed at the moment.