Skills needed to develop interactive e-book?

usignuolo

I am the author of a book which would lend itself very well to being turned into an interactive ebook - text and images with some degree of animation. I am reasonably IT literate but do not possess the skills to turn my work into an ebook. I need a programmer who can work with me on this as a collaborator. Anyone able to tell me what skills I should be looking for and how I might go about finding someone with them?

flakmagnet

Hi,

It would depend on quite a few things really, what format(s) you'd want the ebook on is a big question, is all the animation/illustration already done and so on and also if the book has already been published or not, and if so, have you retained the rights to republish it in another format?

If it's a specific format (say iPad specific) you'd be best checking with a forum for that device. But it all depends on what stage you're at really as to whether you'd need an animator/illustrator on board too and so on.

jayme1

if you have a Mac and want to publish to the apple bookstore, then released yesterday:
http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/19/apple-announces-ibooks-author-app-for-os-x/
http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/19/apples-ibooks-author-hands-on/

but any book you produce using that software can only be sold with apple, to sell it on another platform you would have to produce the book again on another piece of software: http://www.macrumors.com/2012/01/19/a-closer-look-at-ibooks-author-textbooks-and-exclusivity/

usignuolo

Work is all my own text and illustrations. I have a publisher but I normally write in a completely different field. This is a new departure and I was about to see if I could interest a different publisher, I have one who has expressed an initial interest, when it occurred to me that it was an ideal subject for an interactive book (like The Smelly Sprout if you know that). I realise I would need different versions for different platforms.

Apple's new tool for developing ibooks looks interesting but I imagine when the cost of tablets comes down, there will be an equally large market for android apps. I will need to check out the restrictions on the apple software quite carefully as I would not want to find my book was only available on ipads.

It's really annoying the way publishers of all types, try to take advantage of authors.

So back to my original question, let us assume I am developing it as an android based app in the first instance and need a programmer as a collaborator/developer, what skills would I be looking for in one?