Is it possible to embed an iBook in an iOS app?

Question

I've got a requirement to build an iBook title for iBooks. But now they're adding new requirements that really don't fit in an iBook, so I was thinking I'd make an app instead that references the iBook, but has additional screens for the more complex functionality.

To reference the iBook content, I thought it would be ideal to embed the iBook on one screen in the app, so the question is: can you do this? Is there an iBooks widget for iOS that would let me embed an iBook title in an app? OR is there some other paginated control that would let me flow text across pages in an app?

Failing this, is it possible to install the iBook as a conventional title in iBooks, and link to it from an app, so that I could at least jump directly to the book from the app? And, ideally, jump back, where I could have a link in the iBook that would jump to a specific screen in the app?

Answer 1

Embedding the ibook in the app would not be possible, but cross-linking would. That's not to say cross-linking would be easy, or do everything you mention. Each ibook in a user's library has an ibooks: url that will open that book. The problem is knowing that URL, because I believe it's not unique across devices (could be wrong about that, but probably not). And I think you can launch apps from links anywhere, but I don't know the specifics of how you could do deep-linking.

In any case, you might look at ibooks author which supports the use of Apple's dashboard widgets. You can use dashcode to create embeddable HTML 5 apps in an ibook file.

Answer 2

It looks like Chevron packaged an iBook into an App. It uses several of the features of an iBook, which I guess could be recreated as an app. But I wonder if there's an easier way to embed an ibook into an App.

[https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/next*-chevrons-technology/id556105038?mt=8]