Publish Your Own Apple iBook
May 27th, 2010 | By James Lewin | Category: Apple iPad, Citizen Media, General 
Apple announced today that you can now self-publish iBooks to the iBookstore.
Here are Apple’s requirements for publishing an Apple iBook:
Technical Requirements:
- An Intel-based Mac running OS X 10.5 or later
- At least 1 GB RAM
- QuickTime 7.0.3 or later. This is so you can encode and deliver content using our dedicated software.
- At least 10 GB of available hard drive space (more for larger catalogs) is recommended.
- A broadband internet connection with an upload rate of 128 kbps or faster is recommended.
Book Content Requirements:
- ISBNs for all titles you intend to distribute
- You must be able to deliver your book content in EPUB format, passing EpubCheck 1.0.5.
Financial Requirements:
- A US Tax ID
- A valid iTunes Store account, with a credit card on file
- Apple does not pay partners until they meet payment requirements and earning thresholds in each territory. You should consider this before applying to work directly with Apple as you may receive payments faster by working with an Apple-approved aggregator.
Apple lets you sell your iBooks in multiple countries at the price that you set.
via MacLife
Unfortunately, as I try to begin this process, waaay too many roadblocks get in the way.
While you don’t give a hoot about my li’l ol’ book, I’m guessing that a lot of good stuff isn’t going to find its way to the iBookstore unless you make this process easier. You know…the way Apple computers are supposed to be easier.
“ePubChecker” is a free program to verify your EPUB file. Runs locally on your own computer. Uses the “epubcheck” engine as required by Apple to submit your iBook.
http://www.rainwater-soft.com/epubchecker/
It IS possible to self-publish onto Apple’s iBookstore… I have done it with my novel ‘The Dare Ring’, which is accessible through the iBooks app on all iPads and iPhones. I’m based in the UK, so it is possible here too.
It wasn’t all that easy – creating the epub book is non trivial as none of the free conversion tools did exactly what was needed. But it can be done. Once you’ve created the epub document (and triple checked it – some of the conversion tools make unexpected changes such as losing italics) – then uploading it through iTunes Connect is relatively straightforward.
Forgive my enthusiasm, but if you like thrillers or Fight Club, check out The Dare Ring by Titus Powell. Only $2.49 and already getting lots of acclaim.
This is a great article. Very rare and informative… thanks alot !!
Don’t get too excited about all the Apple iBooks self publishing news. As soon as you publish you create and publish your book through Apple’s “iBooks Author” you give up your rights to publish that book through any of the wide variety of popular eBook publishers. I don’t work for this company but my personal suggestion would be to use Smashwords.com. If anyone has tried going through the process of getting an ebook published and up for sale on more then one site then you know that each site has a different system and different requirements that make the entire process long and frustrating for each of them. Smashwords.com helps you easily get your ebook properly formatted and submitted to a ton of the major ebook retailers including: Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo and the Diesel eBook Store to name a few. They also sell your ebooks on their own online store and make your ebook available for sale in just about every format that exists and to top it off they do all of that for free!