Getting your novel published and into the iBook store with iBook App

It is not that difficult to make an e-book in the e-book format to get it into the iBook store. If you are prepared to go out and buy your ISBN numbers, then you can deal with Apple direct. What may be a better thing to do for your first two or three books that you write, would be to use a service of one of the e-book aggregators such as Lulu or Smashwords. I know that Lulu will give you an ISBN number for free and they are able to recoup the cost of the ISBN numbers by taking a percentage of the sales. Apple take 30% of sales anyway and Lulu will take 20% of that which is left. Lulu has a calculator for working out how much you will get paid from each sale of your e-book. One example is that if you sell a book for $4.99 then you can expect to earn €3.14 from each sale. When you consider what your earnings would be from the dead tree versions of books after the publishers off taken their cut, then the Lulu self publishing method actually looks quite attractive.

Getting published and making electronic books with your iPad and iBook app

The first thing to do of course is to write your book, as I have suggested before when you’re using the Mac, Scrivener is the way to go. In fact the developers of Scrivener have recently brought out a Windows version, which I think is now out of beta. Of course as I am a Mac guy I’m going to recommend that you are better off with a Mac and an iPad. One of the good things for users of Scrivener, is that you can export directly from it to the e-book format. I have tried this out, tested it a number of times and have found that the format is just right to convert your writing and be accepted by the Apple iBook store.

The iBook App application looks to be very good for creative types, to design and make books that are not just text. For instance, in the example book in there, called ‘A Is for Aardvark’, on page 2 there is a button which will when tapped, play a sound. Within the settings at the top of the application there is a preview button. I am trying out that book at the moment and when I tap the button for the sound I get to hear the sound of the Buffalo. On the next page there is a similar button that plays the sound of a cheetah. It is all quite impressive really, I like it.

In the top menu bar, there is a book icon and this is where you set the details of the book. You have the title, icon title, store description and other settings that relate to how the book will be in the Apple Store for books. There are also settings in there for the page navigation and transitions. You can choose from curl left to vortex or have the pages fade into each other when you tap to change your page. At the bottom of this set of book details settings, you will find your button to export out to iTunes or Dropbox.

E-Booking to the Bitter End!

This application, Demi Books Composer is free and looks very accomplished. I plan to create a book with this and take it all away through to the finished product, to see how it all works. I will update this post with more information when I have done that. In the following posts about creating a books I will also be looking at Book Creator, Creative Book Builder, e-Book Creator and also e-Book Magic. I have already bought the application, Book Creator and I am looking forward to trying out that iBook app, which I will also to bring a fully formed book into fruition.