Publishing Your Book: iBook

In four previous posts, we discussed how to format your manuscript to prepare it for print, prepare it for ebook versions, design a cover, published as a print copy through Createspace, and prepared an ePub for Kindle and iBooks. The last post covered how to prepare, upload, and publish your book for Kindle. Today’s post describes how to set up and upload your ePub to iBooks. Here are the steps of the entire project (we are on #8):

If you worked through the process outlined in posts 2, 3, and 5, you now have an ePub file and a jpg of the front cover only (not the full front-spine-back cover for a print copy). See the previous post for how to prepare the ePub and the cover (see the post on Cover Design for more on the latter).
Note 1: publishing your books directly with iBooks requires a Mac because iTunes Producer, the app used to prepare the book, add pricing and other metadata, and upload to the iBook store, is a Mac-only application. If you do not have access to a Mac, you can use an “agregator,” a third-party service who will add your book to the iBook Store (among others), such as SmashWords or Lulu. I will cover these services in later posts.
Here at Sulis, we almost always publish directly with Apple, because the royalty is slightly higher than going through ta third party, many of whom take a cut of the royalty for their service. If you wish to publish your book directly with Apple, and have access to a Mac, continue below.
Note 2: This tutorial describes how to publish a regular eBook to the iBook store, which can be read on any iOS device, or Mac. You can also publish multimedia-rich books to iBooks, using iBooks Author. Most indie authors have no need for the latter, though I have published such books and am well-versed in preparing books with iBooks Author. Contact me for more if you are interested.

Set up an iTunes account for publishing books

In order to upload and publish your book at Apple iBooks, you must first have an Apple iTunes account. This is the same account you use to buy music from iTunes, and can be the same as you use for the Mac App store, iCloud services, etc. Called an Apple ID, most people already have one for use with iTunes, at least. If you do not, go to the Apple ID website and sign up. (You will have to place a credit card on file, but this is only for purchases you might make with the account—publishing with iBooks is free.)
Next, create another free account at iTunes Connect. This online account is the equivalent of your Kindle Direct account in the last post, allowing you to see the books you have available for sale, pricing, sales and trends, payments of royalties, contracts, user roles, and more. Go to the iTunes Connect website here. On the first page, choose “Books” from the drop-down menu at the bottom, then click “Continue.”

On the next page, enter your Apple ID, click the authorization checkbox, and click “Enable.” This enables your iTunes account to use iTunes Connect. Verify your information on the next page, click whether you are a Individual or organization publisher, and enter the seller name (this will display as “Seller” on iBooks. Agree to the terms of service and click “Agree.” A verification email will be sent to the email address attached to your Apple/iTunes ID. Verify the email and continue your setup, following all the directions for your agreement with Apple, tax information, and banking information so that you can be paid royalties. You will also download iTunes Producer. This application allows you to set up your eBook and all info, and then upload it to the iBooks store. Once you have completed all information required, you can sign into iTunes Connect and track your books, sales, payments, and more. In the “Resources and Help” section, you can learn more about your account and the process.

Publishing your book to iBooks

Once you have this all set up, publishing a book is quite simple. You should already have your ePub ready (the one you prepared and and used to upload to Kindle in posts 5 and 6). Open iTunes Producer. If the window “Template Chooser” does not appears, choose “New” under the file menu. Click on the “book” icon and click the “Choose” button on the lower left.

On the next screen, enter all information as indicated: Title, subtitle, series name, Author(s), descriptions, and so forth. Many of these fields are optional. You do not need an ISBN number to publish an eBook with Apple, just like Kindle. (Some third party services, such as SmashWords, require you to have one even for eBooks.)
Drag your cover file (in jpg format) to the box labelled ”Drag your cover art here.” If you have other screen shots of your book (diagrams, back cover, etc.), you can add up to five in the box labelled “drag up to five screenshots here.”
Once you have entered all of the necessary information on this screen and added at least your cover file, click the icon “Price” (top left of window, middle icon). This screen is where you set he rights and pricing. If you do not wish your book to be digitally protected from transfer to other users, click “DRM-free.” Enter your sales start date (must be today or later) and a pre-order start date if you wish to offer pre-order sales (must be three days or more before the publication date). Choose “digital only” for your ebook, and enter your home country’s currency (the iBooks store will calculate and show the proper currency for the end user’s country). Enter the book’s price as you wish to list it. In the bottom section, you can choose which countries/territories that wish your book to be made available available. Unless you have reasons for it not to be listed in some countries, choose “All” under the “Choose Region” dropdown menu. Or choose a region. Either way, you can then uncheck specific countries or regions in which you do not want you book listed.

When you have finished with this screen, click the icon “Files” in the upper left. Drag your ePub file to the left-hand box (“Drag your full book here”). iTunes Producer will generate a sample of the book (on the left). You can choose whether the sample will be available during pre-order or not.
Click the “Submit” icon at the top left of the window. The app will ask you to name the file (if you have not already saved it (name it something you will recognize and save it wherever you like on your computer). Click “Save.” On the next screen, click “Submit,” and iTunes Producer will begin uploading your file. With a short time the screen will show “success” and provide some links for marketing your book. Click “Done.” The book will be available on the iBook store within 24 hours (we find it is usually only an hour or two).

Conclusion

Once you have set up your iTunes Connect account, publishing your book is easy with iTunes Producer, taking only a few minutes if you have your ePub file and cover jpeg ready to go. This makes your book available to every owner of a Mac, iPhone, iPad, or any other iOS device. We prefer uploading directly to Apple because it gives our authors a higher royalty payment than using a third-party aggregator. Additionally, Apple’s tracking tools are excellent and easy to use.

However, we do still use third-party aggregators to make sure our authors; books are listed in other distributors and for other devices, such as Sony, Kobo, B&N, Aldiko, and others.

Sulis is available to help you with any of these stages—see our services or email us here.
As always, feel free to enter a comment or a question in the Comment field below this post.