Jumsoft’s Year 2012 Begins with Book Palette

Are you a journalist, a copywriter, or an offshore plough mechanical technician who works on an oil rig but has always harbored a secret dream of being a published author? Are you an actual published author who would happily stuff your entire publishing company into a packing box and send it to the farthest, most deserted island on the map? Do you have a Mac? If you answered yes to at least one of these questions, you must have already heard about iBooks Author, Apple’s stunning new application for creating and self-publishing gorgeous books for iPad. Maybe you’ve even downloaded it for free. It’s that easy these days.

If you have the slightest idea of what the Jumsoft team is doing for a living, you might also suspect what comes next. Yes, it’s been less than a week since Apple announced iBooks Author, and we already have an answer to it: Book Palette, the first set of templates for iBooks Author available on the market. Actually, we almost had it ready within 24 hours after the announcement, but “almost” doesn’t count—does it?

So, the first version of Book Palette gives you 10 templates for creating various e-book styles—from glossy business publications to a traditional cookbook featuring a chef, his chef’s hat, cravat, and all. Even better, the set is more than likely to grow, and you will get all future updates from the Mac App Store for free.

All templates contain the full range of standard section and page layouts provided in the iBooks Author app, including covers, chapter pages, text pages, tables of contents, glossary pages, and more. There are lots of different text styles for different book elements, such as body text, chapter titles, captions, references, etc. You can select these styles with a single click, which will help you keep the look of your book consistent.

You can easily recolor, move, or remove most elements in Book Palette. Type or paste in your own text, add and remove text boxes, change the fonts—basically, do your own thing. Stock images are easily replaceable with your own photos or pictures. Gallery, video, and other widgets featured in iBooks Author are very neat and also have a matching look, which you can change for your own liking.

You can take a look at Book Palette samples here and purchase it for $2.99 here (the link will take you to the Mac App Store). Just make sure you have downloaded and installed iBooks Author first! Or at least hold your horses with negative reviews if you haven’t