The portrait or vertical Book Title page is the first image that the reader will see after downloading your book. When reduced to a thumbnail graphic, it will be displayed in your book’s listing in the iBooks Store and in your reader’s iBooks Library.

For a children’s book template, the storybook page layouts are the most important part of the template. So where do you start? What are the requirements? The most important requirement is that this template should feature large graphics and a small amount of text.

The template’s first section begins with the title page. From there, you can add other pages to this section, such as the foreword, copyright, dedication or introduction. If you prefer, you can just have the Title Page and no other pages in the front matter.

There are a few considerations when preparing the graphics for a full-screen picture book or children's book, which will be compiled in iBooks Author. We will discuss those considerations. To simplify these tutorials, I am assuming that the target mobile device for your book is the iPad.

The first task you have when creating a book in iBooks Author is to give titles to the chapter and sections of your book which will determine the Table of Contents. In the Book Pane are the pages that create the foundation of your book, as they contain hidden code, called meta data.

In this tutorial, we will continue to take a close look at the iBooks Author template, in preparation for building our own custom template for a children's board, picture or chapter book.

One of the most requested features for my iBooks Author Children’s Book Template is a learning section with pages for individual iBooks Author Review Widgets. In this tutorial, we will take a look at the Quizzes section layout and some individual widget page layouts for the Children’s Book Template.

Now that we have the front matter finished, we can add the storybook pages to your iBooks Author book. This section in the template begins the story portion for your book. For short early reader books, one section may be all that is needed. But the template has three story section layout designs.

In the last tutorial, we began building your book in iBooks Author by customizing the Book Title layout with your own title and book cover illustration. Now, it’s time to tackle the Table of Contents.

This video series entitled iBooks Author Essential Training by Chris Mattia has been updated as of December 2015. The sample book that you learn to create in iBooks Author is the same but some of the videos have been updated and new videos have been added for the latest version of iBooks Author.