[robomartin]

The bigger question in my mind is: Why use the Apple authoring tool in the first place?

Writing a book is a lot of work. It is a huge investment in time and money. I would think that it would be far smarter to author it using a tool that allows output in a myriad of formats. And, yes, one of those formats could be ibook, but not the only one.

[eridius]

Sure, if you want static content on multiple platforms. But the iBooks Author tool enables interactive content that no other platform provides.