Tunes Producer will upload your book to the store so that Apple can approve it. Use the former for layout-dependent textbooks and digital coffee table publications, and the latter for novels and other titles where the text can flow from page to page as the rear resizes and changes the font. Cross-Referencing – easily refer to any piece of text to support whatever you’re writing. If you’re publishing a re-flowable book created using an alternative application you need to complete the first step manually, so open iTunes Producer and create a new project, then add your exported EPUB file and excerpt. When your application has been approved you’re ready to upload your book to the store. File formats, store distribution and file size are three other important factors to consider before selecting a distribution method. With this plan you submit your validated ePub file and either supply your own ISBN or, like Smashwords, choose a free one.

Using the same example I used for Smashwords, you need to sell 187 books the first year to breakeven. Like the example below. It’s also safest to stick with the most well-known platforms, like the ones associated with your phone’s operating system. By opting for ePub and shipping free tools like iBooks Author, Apple has made it easy to create books for sale through its online iBookstore. Unlike Apple you can use any kind of computer you like. Once you have that down pat, however, then you can self publish. An attorney might tell you that by additionally copyrighting your work through the Library of Congress, you’d have registered proof of ownership should there ever be a question. There are several distribution partner options but they use one of these business models, or a combination thereof. One of our specialties is helping publishers select. Accounts are free to set up (Apple deducts a 30% fee from each book sold, so if you sell nothing you pay nothing) but you do need to decide whether to sign up directly, in which case you keep the whole of the remaining 70%, or through an aggregator, which simplifies the process but means the aggregator themselves – a company that acts as a front for multiple smaller publishers – takes a further cut itself.

Instead I want to describe three of the more common ways that small or mid-sized publishers can put books into the store. You can also request your social media savvy acquaintances. You may already have one of these for downloading music, but if you’re already using it to sell music or other media through Apple you’ll need to set up another account, as Apple requires discrete IDs for each media type you want to sell through its stores. You have to supply your own ISBN. Smashwords has several ISBN options including free. An ISBN number can be used to identify the book’s code digits, language, publisher, book title, edition, and format. You can also add multiple authors who contributed in your book at this step. To add photos to your book pages, you first click on the “Upload” function in the book making program to upload all the photos. Then go to the “Insert” menu, select “Image” and then “Upload from Computer,” if you have the visual saved to your drive, or find your image with an internet search or by accessing Google Drive or Google Photos.

Once you have finished creating your book you’ll need to publish two editions. You will need to use another self-publishing service to produce your book. If you’re using Scrivener to produce a reflowable book, create the latter by unchecking most of the boxes in the export dialog until only the sample pages remain, then export this second copy in ePub format. If you’re creating a Multi-touch book, click the Publish button in iBooks Author to compile the full book and a free excerpt. I mostly download samples before buying, unless I know and trust the author. It’s up to you whether you add any screen grabs showing the interior of your Bernardo book cover, but you’ll know from your own experience of browsing the iBookstore (and App Store) that grabs really help to sell a product. To add additional roles such as Editor, Illustrated by, Narrated by, and more, tap or click the Add button in the Author section, click the Author pop-up menu, choose a role, then enter a name. However, if you want to add more features to your PDF document (such as hotlinked URLs, a hotlinked table of contents and/or index, forms, or pages imported from other programs), you will need to buy the program.