Guys, the app is a marketing game based based on trading to promote the novel which is based on a hedge fund. The app will not display the book or read it in the app. I just try to get them to buy it in the end. I could just post a link to the book on google play, but I would like to try to use IAP to sell the book, then “download” it from google play books.
Carey
I’m starting to realise 
How can I present my content then?
M
Hi Michael,
You can use Corona’s text APIs, image APIs (if you have images in the book), etc. to present your content. But if the book is a very “text heavy” tome (like a novel), an app may not be the best way to present it. E-books of that sort are commonly created and distributed in a format like EPUB which works on Amazon devices, Apple iBooks, Nook, and basically any other e-reader.
That being said, Corona can create rich, interactive e-books. Please see this section for some past examples:
http://www.coronalabs.com/i-want-to-build/ebooks-comics/
And, one popular 3rd-party tool for creating e-books with Corona is “Kwik”. I urge you to explore this product and see if it will help you accomplish what you need. They offer a free trial as well.
Take care,
Brent
Thanks Brent,
Kwik’s a bit expensive so I’ll have to think about that, the free trial also limits you to six pages and watermarked images. My ebooks about 20 pages. So I might try the other route with the API’s. This seems to be quite a bumpy subject with corona as if Ebooks are uncommon!? I’ll keep researching! Thanks again!
M
Hi Michael,
Of course, you can just design the e-book yourself without using Kwik. Kwik just makes it easier and faster for many people, and if time is money, then they consider it worth the up-front cost. Kwik is not required, however, to create a nice interactive book using Corona.
Brent
Yeah kwik is definitely worth the money from the looks of things! But my wallet says no for now 
so do you advise the api’s?
M
The best place to begin is Corona University. This is the hub for our guides and tutorials. As a beginner, pay attention to the video tutorials, most of which cover the basics in a straightforward manner. The guides are more comprehensive, and you can read them when you’re more accustomed to the SDK.
http://www.coronalabs.com/resources/tutorials/
Have fun!
Brent
Following on to what Brent said. Corona has been used to great success to deliver interactive children’s books and graphic comic/novels. The reason is these apps are not text heavy but are art heavy and have elements that can be interacted with. I don’t know what your books are like, but just thinking in terms of “books” be it a novel, a short story, a tech manual, the things that are traditionally done as PDF’s are probably not something you want to tackle with Corona unless you went with Enterprise edition and included a native PDF reader. Still that type of content is best as Brent suggested as an EPUB and distributed through a book seller.
With a Corona app (and this may be more toward Carey’s concept) you could easily develop a game to support your book and provide a link to a book store where the book could be bought. You could use in app purchases to let the person download your PDF so that they can use their local PDF viewer to read it. How you download it may be a bit tricky because the regular download API for Corona puts the file in the app’s sandbox and the device’s e-reader wouldn’t be able to access it.
@Rob/Brent,
Thank you so much guys for taking the time to help me out I really appreciate all the wisdom! I’ve signed up to amazon and am taking a look at the EPUB route. I’ll take your advice I think and do ebooks outside of corona. I know it’s possible to do it with Corona but in my current position it’s not the best route. As well as this I’m going to work my way through the entire guide section Brent posted and do my homework to make for better games and apps! Thank you for being supportive and providing so many answers during my learning curve!
M
Focusing strictly on Android and circling back to my question, If the book is being sold in Google Play books, can a user do an IAP purchase of the book from within the app, that will simply make it appear in google books on their device? I know this question is a bit obscure, but I would rather do IAP than take them to the google store via link. As this is an all google solution, there should be a way.
@carey.green, I don’t know enough about how Google Play books work, but in general your app can only download to it’s own app sandbox, unless there are specific OS controlled API’s like the photo library that supports copying files in and out of the photo library. But even if Google has that API for Android, we don’t have it implemented, so I’m pretty sure the answer is no.
What you can do is use system.openURL() to open your book’s download page in the browser which on iOS ends up in the right app to buy the product, and I would hope Android would have the same behavior.