Thursday 26 January 2012

My iBook Adventures

Today I went back to school very excited to show my iBook on my iPad. This book is in Indonesian my second language. My first job was to get my language proof-read by my Indonesian colleagues. I wanted to make sure that my Indonesian was not too formal and therefore suitable for children as my book is a children’s story.



Then I tried using iTunes Producer to create the .itmsp iBook package. I am still a little confused as Indonesian is not on the list of languages. Does that mean that there are no books in the iBookstore in Indonesian?

There are only 14 languages in the drop-down list. When I tried to type over the option to add Indonesian. It continued to fail when I uploaded the package to iTunes Connect. Consequently I have had to put my book language as English even though I have written it in Indonesian.

I hope that I can create a series of books for children written in Indonesian. I need Apple to add Indonesian language to their list of languages.

A word of advice ...

I neglected to read the fine print and had to resize both my cover art image and my screenshot images for my book.

For the Cover art:

Cover art should be at least 600 pixels along the larger axis and must be a TIFF, JPEG, or PNG file in RGB Color mode. For an average trade paperback, this could be 400 x 600 minimum size.
For the screenshots:

Screenshots should be a clear picture and be a 1024 x 768, 1024 x 748, 768 x 1024, or 768 x 1004 pixel
JPEG or PNG file with the appropriate file extensions (.jpg, .jpeg, and .png) in RGB Color mode.
Once I had done this I had only one other error - language. I tried to type in Indonesian but it is not one of the language options from the drop down list. In the end I put English.

Needless to say the upload was successful. Now I am wondering what happens next. I have gone into the settings and made it available to the world.

3 comments:

  1. I think you couldn't choose Indonesian because iTunes does not have an official iTunes store in Indonesia.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Indonesia does have an iTunes store, but currently there is no content in iBooks in Indonesian. I am hoping to change that.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Your article about Indonesian language is really interesting. Thanks for sharing your idea with us. I have intensive knowledge about Indonesian language , culture etc. I have phrasebook about Indonesian language.We are making a plan to teach Indonesian language for our students so that they will have sufficient knowledge about their native Indonesian language.

    ReplyDelete