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The Windows tool that is most analogous to Apple iBooks Author is Adobe InDesign for Windows. It costs $500.
With iBooks Author, Apple is making the tool available for free but to use it you must own an Apple Macintosh to run the tool on. This is analogous to what it takes to develop apps for iPhone or iPad. You can only develop apps for iOS using the Apple Xcode software development environment, which is free, but you must own an Apple Macintosh to run it on. End of story.
You can buy a Mac mini for $600 and run the free Apple iBooks Author on it. That's not too much more expensive than buying Adobe InDesign for the Windows computer you already own. Of course Adobe InDesign is much more flexible and powerful than Apple iBooks Author in that it can format and output documents for many different purposes. Apple iBooks Author, of course, has only one purpose and only one output format for viewing ebooks on only one device.
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