For many, the forced quarantine has given creators and makers time to complete projects they’ve had on the shelf. Every week, I’ll feature some things to do during the COVID-19 quarantine. It may be an app, tool, game, or something techie you can use to be more productive or be entertained during the quarantine.

First, I apologize for missing last week’s post on creativity tools. Too many 24 hour work days in one week.

This week’s post is another in the, choose-the-right-tool-for-the-right-job column. In an earlier article, I wrote about using Scrivener for my novel and for a new comic book I’m writing.

Scrivener is a great tool for the author to compose their work during the writing part of the project. My editor at the time wanted to use Microsoft Word to make his changes and process my rewrites during that part of the process. After editing, we were ready to assemble and layout the book for digital media. You can layout an ebook using Word or exporting as a PDF, but your book will lack a certain pizazz. After editing was done we used a couple of different tools for finishing the book. We used different tools for Amazon’s and Google’s e-book distribution.

After getting some royalty checks from Amazon, we’re making the jump to doing a real release on Apple’s iBooks platform. iBooks provides the ability to add color, yay!, more layout control, and embeddable content including video.

iBooks Author treats your content like a project. Your presented with an IDE styled application with a left-hand pane outlining the chapters of your book, and a side-scrolling main frame for all of your content. Here, you can paste all of your material from your manuscript and perform your embeds. On the far right-hand side, you’re presented with an inspector for embedding rich content, adding hyperlinks to your text, and adjusting the text and callout styles.

iBooks Author is free, like many things Apple requires you to use in order to sell in their platform. I’m hoping we can get the second edition of the book out this year. The only thing I’m lacking is time. 🙂

If there’s a tool you like to use to boost your creativity during the quarantine, let us know in the comments. Please stay safe out there, and make solid decisions for yourself. COVID-19 has hit some states and cities are harder than others. Do what’s good for your health.

Thanks!