There are many programs currently available for educators who wish to create their own digital textbooks such as:
Book Creator seems to be the easiest program to use if you are just beginning to make your own digital textbooks as it is geared towards educators and students creating ebooks for the classroom. It also has the most features for the lowest price, making it our program of choice. Adobe InDesign offers a more professional service, but requires users to be familiar with the design layouts of other Adobe products. Canva is a great choice if you are looking for a quick, easy to design e-book, but it does limit you at 30 pages and does not allow you to download your book in the EPUB format, which is required to sell your ebook on Amazon's Kindle Store. Atavist lacks the ability to download the digital textbook in a pdf format, which may limit who is able to view the digital textbook. This program also is geared more towards creating digital magazines, rather than informative textbooks as it offers a service for clients to pay into a subscription for the ebooks you create.
The free versions of the programs outlined above are not sustainable to users to wish to create multiple digital textbooks, or who are looking at selling their own ebooks. Below is a list of price points available for each program:
PRICES:
1. Canva: $12.95/month for the Pro version
2. Book Creator: $60/year for 180 books, or $120/year for 1000 books
3. Adobe InDesign: $239.88/year or $599.88/year for all Adobe Creative Cloud products (Teachers can purchase an educational subscription and save 60% for their first year of use)
4. Atavist: $15/month for individuals, $50/month for small publishers, $140/month for medium publishers, and $250/month for large publishers
Examples of Digital Textbooks
Here are some examples of e-books created using the suggested applications.
Most of these programs can create interactive PDFs which allow for text, graphics and links.
Most of these programs can create interactive PDFs which allow for text, graphics and links.
Page created by: Charmaine Collinge and Scott Lillis