Authors can self-publish in Apple iBookstore
Although most of the ink has been used to describe the major publishers that Apple has signed up to sell in the iBookstore, authors will be able to self-publish there as well, thanks to Smashwords and Lulu.
Among the many changes that are taking place in the publishing industry is the increasing use of self-publishing as a tool for authors. Self-publishing is the publishing of books, micropublishing online works and other media by the authors of those works, rather than by established, third-party publishers, or by vanity presses. Smashwords and Lulu are two of the most popular and easier to use self-publishing services and both have reportedly signed deals with Apple so that their self-published titles can be sold in the new Apple iBookstore, bringing an entirely new segment of the publishing industry to the iPad when it launches, according to an ars technica article.
It looks like some of those self-published titles will be available upon launch, too. The deal between Apple and Smashwords came to light because the self-publisher sent an email to its authors reminding them of the launch date so that they could be sure to get their works ready for use in the iBookstore. In order to do that, authors just need to upload a specially formatted Word document containing the text of their book, as well as an image of the cover. Smashwords uses tools that automatically convert the Word file into the formats specified for online e-book stores such as Barnes & Noble, Amazon Kindle, and Lexcycle Stanza (and now the iBookstore) and uploads books to the stores that an author requests.
The financial arrangements are fairly simple. In the iBookstore, Apple take 30 percent of the retail price, as always, while Smashmouth takes 10 percent for their services, leaving 60 percent for the author. That is better than the 35 percent of the net that is returned to authors for ebooks sold by Amazon for the Kindle. All that Apple asks is that the price end with “.99†and that the price be lower than the price of the paper edition of the work, if there is one. It is assumed that Lulu has much the same deal signed with Apple. So on your mark, authors, get ready, start uploading!
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April 2nd, 2010
If someone already owns a Kindle with Whispersync, I don’t understand why they would purchase their locked down content in iBooks as opposed to downloading the kindle app and transferring all of their kindle content seamlessly.
Given the choice, why would I want to download bookcontent to soley the iPad, when I can download the book to my kindle app on the iPad and read the book at home on my iPad, on my iPhone on the bus to work, and on my computer at work and everytime i opened the app in a different place my location was autosynced? And if you’re going to be reading for an extended period of time on vacation reading the same synched content on the eyefriendly kindle device e-ink.
I see little advantage to purchasing content from ibooks.