How to find an Apple Mac designer/collaborator?

usignuolo

I can do the creative bit of writing and illustrating but I do not own any apple kit - apart from itunes on my pc. So no iphone or ipod or ipad. (I have a blackberry, a playbook and a Creative mp3 player. And a Kindle.) I worked in IT support for many years (until I changed career to write) and when I was in IT I was on call 24 hours a day. It is a relief now not to be at beck and call of my phone - felt like electronic tagging at times - but downside is that I don't have any exposure to the range of apple products and touch screens etc. I don't play games on my phone either.

I do have some IT design skills myself, I can use basic Photoshop and have latest Indesign on my pc and could easily generate a .pdf but I want to create an INTERACTIVE book to run on the ipad in the first instance. I have the ideas but not the apple expertise. So really need a collaborator who is up to speed on all that sort of thing on the apple range. So it is about more than just partition on my HD or handing over a book in electronic form to a designer. I need to make full use of the apple range of technology and a collaborator who can help with that. It is a chance to get in on the ground floor really so although there is not a lot on the table outright, it would provide a learning experience for both of us with the possibilty of income to follow. Hence my offer to pay expenses and share profits.

neilwoods

Why not just publish a standard ebook for the time being and publish it, and see it if is successful first, then with profits, buy the relevant equipment to get you started.

fiddiwebb

Have you looked at publishing through the Kindle format?

usignuolo

The thing is it is words and pictures and the pictures are an important part of the book. I have done some research into publishing it on the Kindle and the problem is that graphical books publication on the Kindle is still in its infancy. Kindle is essentially text based, it is black and white (new Kindle Fire not out yet in UK) and difficult to cross reference.

Publishing graphics on a Kindle has a lot of issues yet to be properly sorted: small screen, difficulty in displaying pictures to accompany specific text (which I need to do) on the same screen, screen page ratios, bandwidth and size restrictions for uploading graphical images for use on a Kindle and so on. This makes it difficult to use for example for text books and illustrated reference books.

So yes my first thought was a Kindle and if the book was just words that would be my approach. But this is 50:50 words and pictures and my idea was an illustrated book and accompanying website. So while I was exploring this, I thought about making it an interactive book combining elements of my website into it. In which case I thought about doing it on a tablet with swipe screens, hot spots etc

And while I was investigating this Apple announced their iBook Author package this week for the ipad, which incidentally is also aimed at the text book market and more suitable for uploading combined text and images.

Hence where I am now.