[scribus] Scribus & Amazon Kendel

[Matthias Schmitt]

Hello,

On 19.03.2012, at 14:11, Gregory Pittman wrote:

> What this is pointing out is the lunacy of offering your ebook through Apple. They seem to have what we might call a "viral proprietary licence", in which your work submitted to them is no longer your work.
> 
> It would be nice to think that they can't possibly get away with this, but if people let them, they will.

Even though this might be a little off-topic, I think we should get some things straight. 

All the confusion is part of the licence conditions of the "iBooks Author" software, which comes for free from Apple. All eBooks not created with this software are not part of this discussion. If they are distributed via the Apple iTunes book store or not.

As the "iBooks Author" software comes for free, Apple wants to earn money on the book sales. If you create a book with "iBooks Author" and you give it away for free, you may do so in any file format via the Apple iTunes book store or any other distribution channel of your choice.

If you want to charge money for your book and you want to distribute it in the "iBooks Author" native file format '.ibooks', then and only then you have to publish your book via the iTunes book store. If you are using the same software and you are publishing the book in EPUB format, then this restriction does not apply.

Why? The '.ibooks' Format is based on the EPUB format with Apple specific extensions. So this file format can only be read by Apple software. This format embeds multimedia extensions in sound, moving pictures and animations, which cannot be implemented with the current EPUB standard. If somebody want to use these Apple specific features and wants to make money with them, then he has to share his profit with Apple. This makes sense to me.

As Scribus in a future version might allow the export of EPUB or MOBI formatted files, this discussion is of no concern here.

Best regards

Matthias Schmitt