From DimSumThinking:
There’s an old joke, “how do you know when your friend is a Vegan.”
“Don’t worry,” the answer goes, “they’ll tell you.”
The same is true about Apple and projects they are passionate about.
Listen to Jony Ive describe the Apple Watch and you know he loves traditional time pieces and was passionate about improving the experience. Look at the Health Kit team and you know they care about improving lives with this device. You’ve got a team involved in imagining what this device can become.
Two years in a row Apple devoted valuable time at their developer conference to Apple Music. There wasn’t an announcement either year that made any difference to developers and yet we heard from Bozoma Saint John this past year and Jimmy Iovine the year before. We saw a video featuring Zane Lowe talking about his years of experience as a radio personality before being wooed to lead the efforts at Apple Music’s Beats 1.
You might like or hate what Apple has done with music but from programming and content, to software, to Air Pod headphones that you can control from your watch – Apple clearly has a passion for music.
. . . .
I’ve joked that if Eddie Cue loved reading the way he clearly loves music, then iBooks, the iBookstore, and iBooks Author would be amazing. Not only aren’t they amazing, they aren’t even good.
It’s like they’ve assigned a committed carnivore to design the meals and cook for Vegans. You need someone who loves and understands vegetables and shares the commitment to not using meat or meat products.
How do you find someone who loves books and reading?
Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.
I don’t believe there are a significant number of people who are passionate about books and reading involved in iBooks, the iBookstore, or iBooks Author.
. . . .
iBooks Author could have been a trojan horse into the personal publishing business. It would have been classic Apple. Instead of small authors going to Amazon’s platform, they would have started with iBooks Author. Apple should have made it easy for them to push to Amazon as well. Why? Because these people wanted to publish on Amazon but they weren’t considering publishing with Apple. Thousands of authors would have come to Apple to create content and stayed with Apple after publishing content there.
OK, so iBooks Author is essentially abandonware, what about iBooks and the iBookstore.
. . . .
Yesterday, I uploaded my latest version of my book to Gum Road and to iBooks. Within minutes I was getting email notifications of sales of my book on Gum Road.
An hour later my book was approved for sale on iBooks. This is remarkably quick. It used to take days. I looked online and my book wasn’t on the iBookstore yet. Also, my name was still listed incorrectly.
Sigh.
In the tool for uploading your book to the iBookstore, the prompt for the author’s name reads “Last Name, First Name”. So I entered it that way. So my book appeared on the store as written by “Steinberg, Daniel H” and was not connected in any way to any of my other books. It turns out it’s been like that for months – I just found out about it.
I called customer support and opened a ticket. The person was as nice as can be and said they couldn’t change it but I could upload a new version of the book with my name corrected and then they could fix it.
So I called customer support yesterday after I uploaded the new version of my book to check that the name was fixed.
Derrick told me that it probably was but I couldn’t be sure until the book appeared on the store.
But, I told him, iTunesConnect says my book’s been approved – can’t he check.
Well, he said, it has been approved but it might not appear on the store for a day and I should check back.
As I found out later when the puzzled emails started to pour in to my Inbox, my book hadn’t been approved. In fact, the existing book was pulled from the store for violating Apple policy. The version that had been for sale on the store for two months incorrectly used the word “iBook” as in “When I released this iBook.” Apple wants you to refer to it as a book. Using the word “iBook” in this context violates Apple policy and they had removed my book.
Then they went home.
I fixed the problem within minutes and uploaded it.
Apple rejected my upload. The version number wasn’t larger than the version number of the current book for sale on the store.
Link to the rest at DimSumThinking and thanks to Nate for the tip.
Just an update: We uploaded two books last week, ebooks.
this is how it rolled:
Kobo came up first, no prob, same day uploaded
B and N wanted more info, then went up the next day
Itunes wanted more info, then ebk went up next day
Amazon was the longest most complicated bs, said x didnt match y. It did, does, always has. It took them not one day, not two, but 72 hours to even reply to our giving them our info again.
Were I rating all four, amazon would be bottom of the pile.
just our experience.
If you could remain with only one of the four, which would it be?
I’m probably not the only one that gets frustrated with Apple because of the lost opportunities there. Not necessarily for me, but for the book selling world in general.
They have a walled garden chock full of customers who read, yet they’re ignoring this excellent way to build a couple more rows in the wall.
Content is king. We all know this. Amazon grabbed that idea and ran with it for their Kindles, cementing their position for the moment.
Greater competition for Amazon is good for us indies. It’s frustrating to have Apple not use this wide open playing field more constructively.
Greater competition would be wonderful for independents, but that isn’t reason for Apple to do anything.
It appears they are content to let Amazon have the book market. Apple doesn’t have to compete in a market just because someone else is in it.
Content is king for only a subset of all businesses. Behavior indicates Apple doesn’t place a high priority on books. And with $250 billion on hand, they can choose any market they want.
Createspace/Nook: Create account, load books, done.
iBooks: Obtain a Mac, download a program called iTunes Producer, load books, decipher cryptic errors, contact customer service, wait 24 hours for them to reply with “you have errors,” attempt to fix yourself, more errors, and voila, days later, you’re on iBooks. So 2000s.
Yep. Although, I’m surprised that contacting customer Apple’s customer service wasn’t a breeze. The one time I did contact them, it was as if I’d found XKCD’s “shibboleet.” Especially compared to the giant hoops it took to get Amazon’s people on the phone.
Still don’t care for the buying a Mac part, though. That’s the part that strongly suggests they intended to work with corporate publishers. And maybe the corporate factor is why I got the shibboleet experience, since I was calling them from my day job and not as an indie. I’ll have to keep that in mind.
I’m glad I used D2D to get to iBooks. It went through without a problem, and I didn’t have to actually deal with the process.
I do wish Apple would step up their game here. Amazon could use some healthy competition, but Apple isn’t really even trying.
I’m glad to read that it is not time for me to make the effort to go beyond Amazon into Apple yet.
Saves me a fair amount of grief, as the learning curve might be steep.
I go through Draft 2 Digital and haven’t had any problems. iBooks has been my largest sales channel for the past three months.
Indies going through aggregators has always been Apple’s prefered approach, from the very beginning. They only opened up to direct Indie submissions when they found that not only was Kindle outselling them on their own platform, so were Nook and Kobo.
Sound advice.
Of course, it matters which aggregator you go through. I don’t know whether it is still a problem, but when I used to release books through Smashwords, the Apple versions always had weird formatting problems that no other version did – fonts changing mysteriously in mid-document, and that kind of thing. It was one reason why I gave up and went KDP-exclusive for my subsequent releases; and if I do go wide again, I shall want strong assurances before I consider going back to Smashwords.
No personal experience, Tom, but I’m hearing many authors are much more pleased with D2D. Of course I’m hearing this primarily from romance writers, so YMMV.
I now rely on broader international distributors than D2D or Smashwords to solve my Apple (and Google Play) distribution issues.
Take a look at PublishDrive, Streetlib, and Ebookpartnership, for example.
Apple treats all of its content providers that way, not just authors. You should see the hoops my husband jumps through each year when he has to renew the app that he has for sale in the app store. Every year it’s the same, a couple of days of teeth gnashing and mental torture until the re-application is finally approved. The app has been for sale for 7 years now, and you’d think it would get easier but it never does. We’ve concluded that Apple HATES their independent developers, in spite of the fact that they are the lifeblood of the app store and the basis for much of Apple’s success (not to mention a huge part of its revenue).
Apple has treated independent content providers poorly from the beginning, in my experience. I gave up on developing applications for Apple in the 80s because they made it so hard, and Bill G made it so easy (at least in comparison) to develop for Windows.
Apple ebook sales are almost a quarter indie.
As of late 2016, 20% of Apple’s paid daily ebook sales were verified as being from indie self-published authors, with another 4% coming from uncategorized single-author publisher imprints–most of whom are also indie.
The indie *share* of US Apple sales has also grown by 1% in the last 12 months, in marked contrast to what we see at B&N Nook.
Nook’s overall ebook sales have collapsed to where they make up less than 5% of the US ebook market now–and even more notably–the indie *share* of those has also shrunk dramatically, leaving indies with a much smaller slice of a much smaller Nook pie than in 2015.
Sorry, DG, I misread your report on the sales numbers. That is so me.
I’m in the process of pulling together another “wide” report on iBooks, Nook, and Kobo, wherein we apply the new-and-improved 2016 rank-to-sales methodology to calculate much more precise numbers for each of their total US ebook sales.
I’m trying to avoid spoilers for now. 😉
But when it goes live, we’ll all have a much clearer picture of what “wide” looks like. 🙂
Apple only ever pushed the Ipad as a reader to try and steal some of Amazon’s thunder. Reading n an Ipad isn’t nearly as enjoyable as a kindle (really not at all). Not to mention their immoral and criminal attempt to drive indies out of the market. It’s no wonder that only 2% of their sales are indie.
Apple ebook sales are almost a quarter indie.
Uh oh, I misread your info, thanks for the correction!
You’re welcome, and no worries, Jeff–sometimes I have trouble keeping it all straight myself. 🙂
“Not to mention their immoral and criminal attempt to drive indies out of the market.”
Maybe I missed this, but what did they do?
When they colluded with publishers to price-fix their goal was to put Amazon out of the book business. No Amazon, no indies.
That does not follow. Since Apple themselves sell indie books, ‘No Amazon, no indies’ is clearly not the case.
Furthermore, your other claim is at best questionable. When Apple colluded with publishers to fix prices, their goal (stated at the time, and by Steve Jobs himself) was to get all the major publishers on board with making their new releases available immediately in ebook form. Before that, Big Pub had been windowing ebook releases in the same fashion as mass-market paperbacks, and many titles were not released in ebook form at all.
It was only after these negotiations (and collusion) took place that Amazon instituted its 70% royalty plan for KDP; and this was done in response to Apple’s offering the same cut to iBooks authors as to app developers.
I don’t know from indie stuff, but everything I’ve read suggests that Jobs was only willing to push a bookstore if he could do so in such a way as to steal all of Amazon’s thunder. See The Battle of $9.99, Andrew Albanese’s look at the history of the agency pricing lawsuit. Jobs thought Apple could become the new number one ebook store if it could collude with the publishers to put Amazon out of the way.
It didn’t work out that way, and apparently if Apple couldn’t be number one, Apple lost interest altogether.
I’ve been following Apple closely for a third of a century. They have never had any particular interest in capturing the largest market share of any market they were in; only the most profitable segments of it. The last thing on the late Mr. Jobs’s mind was becoming the largest ebook vendor. He wanted ebooks for the same reason he wanted music and apps: to sell more hardware.
If Apple wanted independents out of the market, they could simply have dropped them from their site. They didn’t, and they continue to sell independents.
I don’t believe there are a significant number of people who are passionate about books and reading involved in iBooks, the iBookstore, or iBooks Author.
Significant enough for what?
To address the operational issues.
That kind of “our way or the highway” setup works when you are top dog but not when you’re a distant second.
B&N has been suffering from a similar syndrome all decade long, acting for far too long as if their slightest whim is law. (Remember their noisy “principled” fight with Time Warner over a handful of timed-exclusive digital comics? All they did was annoy Time Warner and give extra publicity to the Fire Tablets, which were brand new then.)
The technical term, I believe, is “self-defeating”. 🙂
The technical term, I believe, is “self-defeating”.
It’s only self-defeating if it runs contrary to a firm’s objectives. Apple’s behavior indicates it doesn’t care much about books, and doesn’t intend to pursue that line of business as vigorously as other lines.
Apple is not doing what authors want them to do. Authors set objectives for Apple, then criticize the company for not meeting those objectives. Apple doesn’t care what authors want.
I was referring mostly to B&N, whose attitudes have helped drive them down from a peak of 26% market share to the low single-digits.
But it also applies to Apple in that since iBooks is not really abandon-ware–they are still adding features and looking to expand its reach–Apple clearly does want to increase its ebook revenue and annoying suppliers this consistently is not going to further that agenda.
As a rule, Avis got it right: “we try harder” is the only sensible attitude when you’re anything but the market leader. Otherwise, you should bow out and not degrade your brand equity.
Apple clearly doesn’t intend to do much with books. It seems to be a place holder. It does take effort to maintain place holder status. But independent hopes that Apple will be forced to do things independents want them to do are misplaced.
Otherwise, you should bow out and not degrade your brand equity.
Perhaps they disagree? They are not appealing to a jury of independent authors in hope of approval.
Apple clearly doesn’t intend to do much with books. It seems to be a place holder.
Isn’t that the whole point of the article? That the person who wrote it wishes Apple had more interest in their book store and author platform? I don’t see anyone saying differently.
I don’t see anyone saying differently.
Hey, give Felix some credit for presenting a good case. He told us the behavior of both Apple and B&N was self-defeating.
I contend nobody is defeated if they aren’t in the fight, and we can’t enter them by proxy. If they are getting the results they intend, good for them.
iBooks is legitimately a nightmare to work with, I’ve had most of these problems myself.