OLD POST ALERT! This is an older post and although you might find some useful tips, any technical or publishing information is likely to be out of date. Please click on Start Here on the menu bar above to find links to my most useful articles, videos and podcast. Thanks and happy writing! – Joanna Penn
As much as I love Amazon and KDP, it's important to remember that they are not the only publishing option for authors.
A few weeks ago, Mark Coker did a presentation for the Alliance of Independent Authors on the opportunities for publishing and marketing in the Apple iBookstore.
It's a long video but well worth watching if you're not making many sales on iBookstore, because there are things you can do to maximize your chances of sales. I'll certainly be making some changes myself based on Mark's talk.
Watch the video below, or here on YouTube.
Here's some of my key takeaways from the video:
- On the Apple eco-system, the iBooks app is downloaded more then the Kindle app and the Apple hardware devices have a far more hardware penetration into markets than Amazon's Kindle. iBookstore is now in 51 countries and on every Apple device.
- Different books break out at different times on different platforms. Apple has a more human-powered marketing approach vs Amazon's automated algorithms. This can mean some opportunities for marketing that aren't just based on sales spikes. Apple's team are looking to find new books to please their readers and they find them through many different methods.
- There is no restricted free period on Apple and no price-matching. Free books have 91x more downloads than paid books on Apple and iBookstore promote free more because they are primarily a hardware company, wanting to keep readers in their eco-system.
- Smashwords has great relationships with Apple iBookstore and has recently announced pre-orders and also the Breakout Books program
- For Apple sales, try using the Widgetbuilder and tools that link directly to your Apple sales page. How do you expect to sell anything if you're not directing people there.
I've been a fan of Mark Coker for years. You can check out an early interview I did with him in 2010 here. We were raving about the exciting times in publishing several years ago, and Mark's site Smashwords continues to explode with exciting news every few weeks and more opportunities for indies.
I'd love to hear any comments you have about iBookstore. Have you had sales success on iBooks? Have you used any of the Smashwords functionality for Apple? Do you have any iBookstore specific marketing tips? Please do leave a comment below.
View Comments (11)
The issue I have with the Apple Widgetbuilder (and many other link builders) is that they link to a country-specific site. Because Apple and Amazon both require that customers buy from their local site, I wrote a tool that redirects a user to the book on the Apple or Amazon site in their country (or the US site if their country doesn't have a site). So, a UK user will go to the UK site, a US user will go to the US site.
I've put it up on my tools page. It's free for anyone to use, but note that it adds my affiliate code.
Of course, what would be really nice is if Apple and Amazon would automatically redirect users to the relevant country's website, instead of just showing an error message.
My information may be out of date here but the biggest problem I had was that to use the iBookstore tools to tweak and upload your books, you had to have a Mac computer. Around 2-3 years ago, I attempted to get my books to the iBookstore but no matter what I tried, it seemed to require having a Mac so that you could run the software to make it happen. Given that Amazon & BN.com was doing a fine job already, I just let it go. I agree with your sentiments in making your books available on other platforms but having the available tools on the Windows platform would be a big boost.
I respect Apple and all the wonderful innovations they introduce. But inevitably, I don't care to pay the "Apple tax" and constantly deal with their closed, proprietary, and more costly approach to their solutions.
Hi Matthew, Smashwords can distribute to Apple for you - as per the presentation above - so you don't need anything special, just a Word doc.
Yes, I have considered Smashwords to my books to the iBookstore. I highly respect Mark Coker and his contributions to independent publishing. However, the control freak in me still prefers to go directly and interact with the iBookstore and not go through an intermediary if I can help it. I am not saying I would never work with Smashwords because I do have an account there but it currently has a lower priority than Amazon and BN.com (admittedly BN is in trouble nowadays).
Those of us outside the US are not even allowed to use NookPress for B&N :)
Interesting stuff. Thing is, from everything I've read and listened to (including you, I think, Joanna) says that an incredibly high percentage of ebook sales comes from Amazon. I just signed up to continue my enrollment in Amazon's KDP select even though I have mixed feelings about my experience so far. On the one hand, I liked the 5 days of free promotions the program allows. I was able to give away over 7,000 copies of my book Hearts Left Behind and expect that I'll get even more downloads during this next cycle. I also reached #1 in 2 different categories and peaked at 21 overall for free Kindle books. I was really expecting that I would see a jump in actual sales once the book came off the feel free promo and that didn't happen. So, now I'm wondering whether I should abandon the KDP select program and begin making my book available elsewhere. Are there any guidelines as to when one should jump from KDP select?
Hi Derek,
yes, the dropoff after free is a known phenomenon after changes in the algorithms. Many people now do Select for the first 90 days and then move into other platforms, but you have to make that decision yourself, as many others make good money from the lending library on Select. You have to decide.
My strategy is more long term as although Amazon is the biggest chunk of income for US & UK, other sites have more engagement in other markets e.g. Kobo in Canada, and other customers around the world use other ebook sites e.g. iBookstore ... so my aim is to be everywhere vs short term gain of giveaways. BUT/ it is your choice and there are of course, pros and cons either way. All the best! Joanna
The ibookstore is a farse. One very important thing that is never told to new authors is that while it's easy to load up your ibook to the ibookstore, unless you are Stephen King, your book will never see the light of day. Oh, you will be able to type in the name of the book and it will pop up, but, for example, if you just went to Fiction & Literature, Action & Adventure, New, See all, your new action and adventure ibook that you just submitted will never be seen. If no one knows that your book exists, then it doesn't exist.
I couldnt agree with you more James. My team has published over 6 iBooks using the iBooks author software and sales have been limited owing to a lack of marketing tools and opportunities available through the ibookstore. Ideally the iStore needs to work on its search functionality to offer better and deeper results based on relative topics and titles. All sales of our ibooks have been through our own independent efforts through our company blog or social media.
I show many ratings for two of my books in Apple's store. Few reviews but at least they click the star, or what ever. It must have been from a way back freebie cuz very little money comes through.
The placement was through Smashwords. I CANNOT find fault with Smashwords.Guide, customer service, etc., could not be better. They are great in my book.
Really enjoyed this video and I'm sure I'll be replaying it many times over.
There's one thing I'm left assuming and would like clarification on, am I correct in saying that Smashwords isn't able to aggregate interactive iBooks?
I've just published my first iBook and intend to make a non-interactive version, once completed I'll definitely see if Smashwords are interested in working with me.