Apple announces new version of iBooks Author

Apple has announced a brand new version of iBooks Author, and there's a few very important things to note. Starting today, iBooks Author comes with a bunch of new Apple templates, making textbook creation even easier. Publishers can also use their own fonts right there in their digital books, which should do something to give their books some personality that make them stand out.

Apple has also made it easier to insert mathematical expressions into textbooks, whether those are graphs or equations or charts. Expanding on that, publishers can also put multi-touch widgets into their books, putting even more information at users' fingertips. While all of this is cool, there's one new feature that outshines the rest: iBooks Author publishers can now directly edit their books, so they can make changes on the fly and update information as needed. The rest of the features will definitely come in handy, but we're thinking that the ability to edit books will prove to be invaluable.

This new version of iBooks Author is available today, and you can nab it for free. We're sure that publishers are going to go crazy over this new edition of iBooks Author, so Apple may find itself with a lot of praise after this release. Keep it tuned here to SlashGear for more, and be sure to have a look at our Apple hub to make sure you didn't miss any news from today's event!