IBooks Author is a terrible program

Question

First, let me say that I am an Apple fan. Been using exclusively at home & work (teacher) for 10+ years.
Second, I am very, very proficient with Pages and when I saw iBooks Author, I was very excited. It had a similar feel and I felt like I could do something very special with it.
After 6 months of playing with the program, I would not recommend iBooks Author for anything other than making a simple book complete with some text and adding some pictures. I feel like users of this program were misled by Apple with its simplicity of use, here is why:
1) I lost my index.xml file (and I tried all the tricks). This resulted in me losing 50+ hours of work. And yes... I have an older back-up version, but not new enough to make it worthwhile. Back-up the file everytime you use the program. This crucial file disappears for some reason?
2) 3D widgets are bogus. They don't work unless you are lucky or know all the ins and outs of the collada.dae files. All I wanted to do was to import some simple molecules (glucose, amino acids, etc.) and have them full screen on the iPad for my students to manipulate. I spent hours upon hours researching on google, then downloading different programs and exporting files and re-importing them and nothing worked.
3) Interactive Images are not worth the trouble. They are difficult and they are don't end up looking the way they should. There are serious limitations to what you can do.
4) The program is buggy. For example, I wanted to add some images inside a table. Again, this was hit and miss as some of the images showed up on the iPad while others did not. All of the images were similar and were in a similar format.
5) Table of contents, section numbering and page numbering is a mess. You need to be very, very careful when you start chaning these around or it will re-number everything.
I could go on. It is my opinion that this program is not reliable and not worth the trouble.

Answer 1

I too am a teacher and have found Author to be very benficial for my students, fellow teachers and community.
Take a look at An iBuild Opportunity Preview and Part 1. I have published more than 60 books and while Author has limitations, many have work-arounds.
If you need help, I am always willing to help students learn...