I am new to Hype pro. I am working on a small book, which will have several widgets. These widgets are ready (except some fine tuning), but I have a question about iBooks DRM and the fact that it doesn’t protect the widgets in iBooks.
Jonathan was very helpful to explain how we can protect ourselves by unchecking ‘Create restorable document file when exporting’ in Hype’s preferences… but I wanted to ask those of you who are doing the same thing (making iBooks with widgets) how concerned are you guys about the fact the resources can be stolen?
And how do you all feel about exporting video, instead of a widget to protect your elements, resources, etc…
I prefer using widgets rather than videos because the widgets are interactive and they’re generally smaller in size. From my experience on the App Store, I found that I would lose sales if my app was too large. Lots of people don’t have a lot of space on their iOS devices.
So, when I made A Book About Hype, I focused on keeping the book lightweight.
I deleted some extra files from the widgets, but that was mainly to keep the file size down. With an iBook, I don’t need to worry about IE 6-9 support.
It is a tough problem, but I think it’s getting better for publishers. With all the hacking, viruses and ransomware, people are better understanding the downsides of illegally downloading digital files.
A Book About Hype is about 20 MB, which is 1/100th of the limit. That's a good target, but I was pretty obsessive about keeping the file size down. I use SVG images to support retina displays, while having high quality. (This eliminates the need to have two sets of images.) I used ImageOptim to compress the images too. If I'm remembering correctly, even the widget screenshots were compressed.
I think under 50-100 MB is also a good idea too. I'm not sure if it relates to iTunes books, but it was a problem with apps. There was a cap for cellular downloads. If someone is waiting for a train and they're bored, they might buy the book. But if it's too big to download over cell data, they might not be interested enough to download it at home on Wi-Fi.
I'm not sure that's a good idea. Dividing the sales lowers the ranking. The better a book sells on iTunes, the higher it ranks. The better the visibility, the better the sales - and the more likely Apple will feature your book.