Tag Archives: writing

Apple iBookstore: Understanding Payment Requirements

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It’s a royalty agreement, folks.

The other day, I received an unusual email on my Flying M Productions email account. Flying M Productions is my little publishing company, the one I use to publish Maria’s Guides and other books. Its website isn’t much to look at; just a lot of promotional material for the items it publishes and sells. There’s no support for any book there; all support for Maria’s Guides can be found on the Maria’s Guides website.

The Question

Here’s the message, in its entirety; I’ve only omitted the sender name:

I am looking for understanding of this financial requirement for ibooks author:
(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 was not able to explain this and said I had to contact you.
Please explain.

This is obviously a lie — or a big misunderstanding — I seriously doubt whether Apple even knows of the existence of Flying M Productions — especially since I’ve been waiting over a month for it to approve two titles for the iBookstore. The idea that Apple would refer someone to me about one of their policies is truly laughable. The idea that a tiny publisher with just four titles in 20 years would provide support for the most valuable company in the world is a real joke.

And that explains why I didn’t reply.

What’s This About?

But I wanted to know what she was talking about so I did a little search. I wanted to see whether the text she’d included in parentheses was actually present in any Apple agreement. I picked “payment requirements” and “Apple-approved aggregator” as my search phrases.

First I searched the most recent version of the 37-page Ebook Agency/Commissionaire Distribution Agreement that I’m required to sign to create books for sale on the iBookstore. No joy.

Then I searched the license agreement for the current version of iBooks Author. No joy.

Then I went online, and followed a bunch of links on the Apple and iTunesConnect websites. I eventually wound up on the requirements page for the Paid Books Account. And there, in the third bullet under the heading “Financial Requirements,” was the full text she’d put in parentheses in her email message.

Apple’s Stand on This

Before I go on, you need to understand two things:

  • Apple does not want everyone capable of typing a sentence and turning it into an epub or iBooks Author document to publish on the iBookstore. Think I’m kidding? Why else would they require ISBNs for every title sold on the iBookstore? That’s just another hurdle for authors/publishers to jump. Why does Apple take this stand? Because Apple (1) doesn’t want to publish crap and (2) doesn’t want to hold the hands of hundreds or thousands of author/publisher wannabes to walk them through the publication process.
  • “Apple-approved aggregators” exist primarily as a support mechanism for Apple. If an author/publisher is too clueless to publish on the iBookstore, Apple wants a way to graciously hand them off to someone else. Thus, they approve aggregators who apparently don’t mind holding hands with clueless authors/publishers in exchange for a fee.

The Requirements page linked to above is another hurdle for authors/publisher to jump. It lists requirements to further weed out the folks they don’t want to deal with. Hell, you have to have a relatively new Mac to publish on the iBookstore — if that doesn’t weed out a bunch of people, nothing will.

What are the Payment Requirements?

But what the person who contacted Flying M Productions was concerned with was the “payment requirements.” Of all the requirements, this is the least onerous. All this means is that Apple won’t pay royalties until you’ve reached certain minimum sales amounts. Why? Well, Apple doesn’t want to deal with thousands of tiny payments every month. Instead, it holds your royalties on account until you’ve earned enough for them to make it worthwhile to pay.

This, by the way, is common. Google has always done this with Adsense. Amazon.com does it for the Kindle Direct Publishing program.

While this may seem to suggest that you need to reach a threshold for each individual territory to get payment for that territory, that’s not what I’m seeing. In fact, I was just paid today for February’s sales. My royalty earnings on sales in each of six territories ranged from a low of $38.73 to a high of $659.40, and I was paid for the total amount earned.

Paragraph 5(c) of the Ebook Agency/Commissionaire Distribution Agreement states (in part):

After deducting Apple’s commission from eBook Proceeds, Apple shall either remit to Publisher, or issue a credit in Publisher’s favor, subject to Apple’s standard business practices, including minimum monthly remittance amount thresholds determined by Apple (e.g., $150), the remaining balance by electronic funds transfer (“EFT”) no later than forty-five (45) days following the close of the previous monthly sales period.

This tells me that you need to earn a certain amount of royalties before Apple will pay you and they’re required to pay within 45 days of the close of the period. That’s why I didn’t get my February earnings until April 5 — which is still a hell of a lot better than I get from my traditional print publisher contracts.

The $150 is an example. In looking at my past statements, for periods when I only had one title listed in the iBookstore, I was paid $28 one month and $31 another. Clearly Apple is not waiting for me to earn $150 before it pays me.

How Apple-Approved Aggregators Fit In

In re-reading this Requirements page, I’m thinking that Apple is using this scary sounding “requirement” as a way to encourage authors/publishers to use aggregators. But will aggregators pay more quickly? I can’t see how. Unless Apple uses different thresholds for different publishers? Or aggregators are willing to make payments for very small amounts? Or aggregators are willing to pay before the 45-day period has gone by?

Either way, it’s nothing to get all hot and bothered about.

But I do agree with Apple: if you can’t meet their requirements, use an aggregator.

Social Networking Fail

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Come on, folks. If you mean it, get it right.

LinkedInI logged into my LinkedIn account today for the first time in a few months and found 16 invitations. Of those, I knew four of the people and accepted two of the invitations.

I don’t like LinkedIn. It seems like a feeding ground for “business people” trolling for new customers. Just too much bullshit, even for a hardcore Twitter user like me.

The odd thing about LinkedIn is that you’re supposed to know the person you’re inviting to connect. Somehow, people seem able to get around this requirement and still contact me. But do these people honestly expect me to link to them without any idea of who they are or what they do or how a link could benefit us? Most folks use the standard invitation message or simply no message at all, giving me no reason to want to connect.

But today I got a bonus invitation. One guy — a “Cloud Computing Professional” — got creative but still failed:

[redacted] has indicated you are a person they’ve done business with at [redacted,] Inc. · Hi Maria: I hope this email finds u well. I work with [redacted], a company proving business productivity software in the cloud and would like to get in touch with u to discuss possible collaboration on ur technical copywriting. Plz feel free to contact me at ###-###-####. Thanks, [redacted]

He wants me to collaborate with him on some technical writing?

What kind of writer uses “u” for you, “ur” for our (or your?), and “Plz” for please? Would I be expected to write that way, too? Not possible, I’m afraid. You see, I don’t think the word you has too many letters to type, so I tend to type all three of them when writing.

And how many other people who who may have included “writer” in their profile got the same exact message?

I’ve never heard of this person or his company and I certainly have not “done business with” either one of them. Although I was tempted to accept the invitation just to see what his angle was, I really don’t want to spend any more time on LinkedIn than I already do.

So I marked the invitation as the spam it probably was.

Staying Focused in a Distraction-Filled World

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Distractions come in all shapes and sizes.

One of the most difficult things about working these days is simply staying focused. There are far too many distractions in my workplace to stick to the task at hand. And I’m willing to bet that if you work in an office or at a desk, it’s the same for you.

Writers Need to Concentrate

As a writer, it’s vital that I be able to concentrate to organize my thoughts and then get them out in well-written sentences and paragraphs. That’s the task I’m faced with when I need to write something: think about what I need to say and write it.

I’m fortunate. If I can stay focused, I have no trouble writing. Words form sentences, sentences form paragraphs, paragraphs form blog posts, articles, and even books. If I can concentrate on the topic and what I need to say about it, I can get the words out easily. In most cases, I don’t even need to go back and edit other than to check sentence structure and fix typos.

I thought it was like this for most writers. It’s only recently that I discovered that other writers struggle with the actual process of writing. That’s not my problem at all.

My Personal Distractions

My problem is staying focused in an environment full of distractions. Here’s a list of some of the things I face in my office:

  • A cluttered desk. I find that I have a much easier time staying focused when my desk is clear and organized. Yet day after day, I find clutter piles that nag at me and make it difficult to work.
  • Too many open projects. As I summarized in a recent blog post [ADD LINK], I have too many “irons in the fire.” All the time. That’s mostly because I, as a freelancer, need to do work when it comes and keep looking for work so there’s no gap. I’ve been doing this in one form or another for 20+ years. You think I’d be able to compartmentalize better by now. But it’s hard to stay focused on one thing when you know that two (or three or five) other things need attention the same day.
  • Background noise. I have a parrot. Sometimes she makes annoying sounds that can really get under my skin when I’m trying to concentrate. (And yes, getting a parrot was likely a huge mistake. Worse yet, since she’s only 10 years old with a life expectancy of 50, I’ll have her for the rest of my life.) Unfortunately, my parrot isn’t the only source of background noise. At my Phoenix office, there are the landscapers, my neighbor with his loud girlfriend, barking dogs, and the occasional news helicopter hovering over the Apple Store a half mile away any time a line forms for a new product release. Sheesh.
  • The Internet. I could break this down into its components: a Web browser to look up anything anytime I want and an email client to pounce on incoming email as soon as it arrives. Just knowing that it’s there is enough to distract me when I hit even the slightest snag while writing.
  • Social Networking. This is so insidious that it deserves its own bullet point. Thank heaven I’m only addicted — and yes, I do say addicted — to Twitter and Facebook. I bailed out of Google+ about a month ago and am too sick of people trying to sell themselves on LinkedIn to check it more than once a month. But imagine if I’d also jumped in on FourSquare, Pinterest, and those ridiculous “newspapers” people create based on tweets?
  • The weather. In Arizona, almost every day (other than during the summer “hell season”) is perfectly beautiful. Do you know how hard it is to stay indoors when you know how nice it is outside? And then, on those rare days when there are clouds or rain — do you know how hard it is to stay inside and miss the chance to actually get rained on? You think I’m kidding? This weekend, it rained for the first time in three months. I purposely scheduled my work around the expected weather so I could be home to enjoy it.
  • The phone. This is way down on my list because I don’t get many phone calls and I don’t make many phone calls. In all honesty, I don’t like talking on the phone. But that won’t stop me if one of my extra-talkative friends calls and wants to chat. Last month, I used 110 excess primetime minutes on my cell phone — which is my only phone these days — because of long conversations with two chatty friends. (Do you know what that cost? Ouch! I’ve since upped the minutes on my plan.) The phone, of course, is also a source of business for Flying M Air, my helicopter charter service. But at least 80% of the calls I get are people fishing for a cheap flight who tell me they’ll “think about it” when they hear what it’ll cost. And don’t get me started on the ones who need time-consuming flight plan calculations to arrive at an estimate and then never call back.
  • Text messaging. Thankfully, I don’t get or send many. For a while, I had Twitter set to send me Direct Messages on my cell phone. What was I thinking?
  • Chores. Like most people who work from a home-based office, I use chores as a means of “justified procrastination.” For example, “I can’t finish this article now — there are clothes in the dryer that need to be folded!” Or, “I can’t start this outline now — I need to run to the store to buy milk for tomorrow’s breakfast!” (I just did it. I stopped doing this, went outside, toweled off my car (which was wet and clean from the rain), put my Jeep in the driveway, put my car in the garage, and pulled all the clothes out of the dryer. Seriously, I’m hopeless.)
  • Food. I snack all day long. Not huge snacks and not bad snacks. I eat fruit, hard-boiled eggs, cheese on crackers, leftovers. This is not a good thing. I don’t need to snack.

This gives you an idea of what I face. Think about what you face. I bet there’s a lot of overlap.

The Writing Environment

On top of all this is the distraction-full environment of the three applications I normally use to write: Microsoft Word for general writing, Adobe InDesign for book creation, and ecto for blogging.

It’s the formatting options that really get me with Word and InDesign. As I write, I get distracted by the task of formatting my text. With InDesign, the situation is often much worse until I’ve settled on the final styles and template for my book. I’m constantly tweaking things to make them perfect. ecto isn’t nearly as distracting, although since I write in HTML, it’s sometimes more difficult to go back and read what I’ve already written, especially after inserting links and images.

A lot of people swear by applications like Scrivener, which have a full-screen writing mode that supposedly removes all distractions. I’ve tried Scrivener and I really don’t like it for several reasons. First of all, Scrivener has to be learned to be used. That’s an investment in time that I’m not convinced will ever pay off since those skills can only be applied to Scrivener. Second, that distraction-free writing environment has to be turned on. If you don’t turn it on, you have Scrivener’s weird pseudo-outline interface or the cutesy index cards and cork board. That’s not distracting? Third, Scrivener creates Scrivener files, which are generally not readable by other applications. I’ve been bitten in the past when I adopted an application to help me be more productive or “think better” — the program was called Thought Pattern — and wound up with files I could no longer read when the application was abandoned and could no longer run on my computer’s operating system. As a result, I prefer applications that create files in standard formats: TXT, RTF, and DOC/DOCX. (InDesign is a big exception, but worth it for obvious reasons.)

(Just took a 10-minute phone call. Booked a flight for Wednesday. Added two things to my To Do list. Tweeted. )

Now before you use the comments to accuse me of “bashing” Scrivener, please re-read that paragraph. I’m not saying Scrivener is terrible. I’m just saying why I don’t like it. It doesn’t work for me. That doesn’t mean it won’t work for you.

And if all you want is a word processor that has a “distraction-free mode,” why not use Microsoft Word? It’s full-screen mode might be just what you need.

iAWriter
iAWriter’s normal document window is pretty simple.

Of course, I need something more hardcore. So I spent $8.99 for iA Writer, which must be the most basic, distraction-free text editor on the planet. I’m using it to write now. It forces me to concentrate on the actual text by not allowing me to build outlines or format characters or view my document in some sort of print-centric page view that no one really cares about anyway these days. And rather than taking the time to code the links you see throughout this piece, I’m just putting in [ADD LINK] notes to remind me to add the links before I publish.

iAWriter Focus Mode
Here’s iAWriter in full screen view with Focus Mode turned on.

And if I really need to focus on my text one sentence at a time, there’s Focus mode, which basically fades everything I’ve written except the few lines around where I’m currently writing. (I just typed [ADD SCREENSHOT] to remind me to add a screenshot of this and will take the screenshot now. There.) The benefit of Focus mode is that it makes it just a little more difficult to go back and review or edit something you wrote earlier in the document. If you’re like me, you know how much productive time can be lost by tweaking text before you’re finished with the first draft.

There’s zero learning curve to this program. It’s about as close as you can get to a typewriter without losing the ability to edit.

I’m hoping to use this more often to get “back to basics.”

Other Remedies

If a super-simple, feature-free word processor is a remedy for distractions inherent in standard word processing applications, it follows that I should be able to come up with remedies for my other distractions. Here’s what I’m thinking.

ProblemPossible Remedy
A cluttered desk.Clear the damn desk. Then clear it again at the end of the work day. Every day. My sister did this at her bank job. Every time I came to visit her, her desk was completely clutter-free. It was spooky, but I think I could work better at a desk like that.
Too many open projects.Organize tasks with a To Do list that prioritizes project work. Stick to it. Also try to work on each project until finished before starting new ones.
Background Noise.Sometimes I can get Alex the Bird to shut up if I move her cage into my office. Sometimes certain foraging toys can keep her quietly busy for hours. I have to work on this. Not much I can do about the other noises. Of course, I could resolve all noise related issues by simply getting a dedicated office in a quiet place — and leaving the bird at home.
The Internet.Close all Internet apps and keep them closed. No browser, no email. Of course, this is impossible sometimes — my work often requires me to consult websites for information, etc. I think I need more willpower. Maybe a sticky note reminding me to stick to business?
Social Networks.Leave the Twitter client app closed. Stay off Facebook. I think if I schedule my social networking activities to certain times of the day, that might work.
The weather.I got nothing. I’m always going to want to get out in the rain — unless it rains for more than one day in a row. I think that if I gave myself a real day off once in a while, I could enjoy an appropriate number of nice days, too.
The phone.Because work comes by phone, I have to answer the phone. Fortunately, I don’t have to restrict myself about making calls because I seldom call anyone else.
Text messaging.Not enough of a problem to warrant a remedy.
Chores.This is an easy one: save chores for break time. Real break time. Scheduled break time. Of course, that means I have to schedule some break time.
Food.See above. Also, keep food out of the house. That might sound weird, but I’m one of those people who shops for groceries almost every day anyway. It’s one of my chores.

What about you? What distractions do you face? What remedies do you use to stay focused and get things done? Share some of your tips in the comments for this post.

An Objective Comparison of Ebook Distributors

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What I’ve noted so far.

I published, through Flying M Productions, my first ebook in October 2011 and have since published two others. (Learn about all of these titles here.) I went mainstream on all of the ebook distributions, choosing Amazon Kindle (custom mobi), Apple iBookstore (epub), and Barnes & Noble NOOK (epub). With about five months of sales and reseller experience, I thought it was about time to share my observations of these three platforms.

For each criteria, I provided a grade and notes to back it up. Remember, this is based on my experience with just these three books. For the iBookstore, I do not include my experience with iBooks Author-generated books in the table; that’s discussed briefly at the end of this post.

CriteriaKindle StoreiBookstoreNOOK Store
Ease of PublishingA
It’s very easy to get into the Kindle Direct Publishing program and publish books.		C
Apple’s iTunes Connect program requires a lot of paperwork and acceptance of agreements that are often updated. Its interface for publishing is surprisingly unintuitive (for Apple). It requires a unique ISBN for every book sold.		B
Getting into the B&N Pubit program is relatively easy, although there is an approval process that takes some time. Its online book submission process is easy.
Publisher SupportD
Publisher support is nearly non-existent. It’s difficult to send questions. Most questions are answered with a “canned” response. Often, I’m told my question needs more research, but an answer never comes.		D
Publisher support is handled primarily through a menu-driven help system that’s poorly designed. It can take more than a week to get an question answered and it’s usually with a “canned” response.		n/a
I have no experience with B&N’s support system.
Ease of Creating Acceptable DocumentsB
I convert from epub to Kindle using the Kindle Previewer app. This usually goes smoothly the first time around, but it does require that conversion.		C
Apple is extremely particular about formatting and unusual characters in ebook files. For example, it doesn’t like uppercase filename extensions or spaces in file names. This often requires a lot of digging around in epub format files to fix problems. To be fair, I could probably improve my templates to prevent some of the problems I encounter.		B
BN.com accepts just about any epub I send, as long as it isn’t any larger than 20 MB (which I think is too restrictive.)
Appearance of EbookC
The Kindle format inconsistently formats bulleted lists and font sizes and completely ignores some formatting. As a result, my books are not usually formatted as I’d like to see them.		A
My iBookstore books usually look very good. Apple is true to all epub formatting.		B
My NOOK books usually look very good, although I sometimes notice instances where formatting is ignored.
Speed of Review ProcessA
Amazon consistently makes my books available for sale within 24 hours of posting.		D
There is no consistency in the speed of Apple’s review process. I had one book appear within an hour of posting while I waited a week or more for others.		B
B&N consistently makes my books available for sale within 48 hours of posting.
SalesA
In most instances, Amazon sells the most books.		B
Apple sells reasonably well — unless a book has an unusual amount of appeal to Mac users, in which case, it sells best.		D
B&N’s sales are sluggish and rather disappointing.
RoyaltiesD
Amazon offers the worst publishing deal. To get 70% royalties, you must price the book between $2.99 and $9.99. The 70% commission rate is only available for books sold to certain countries. All sales to other countries earn just 35%.You must also pay “delivery fee” based on the size of your book file for all books sold at the 70% commission rate. Amazon enforces price matching, so if your book is available for a lower price elsewhere, Amazon will arbitrarily lower the price of your book in the Kindle Store. And don’t even think of getting into the KDP Select Program; that’s something else I need to blog about soon.		A
Apple offers the best publishing deal: 70% flat rate on all books. No hidden costs, no exceptions to the 70% rate.		A
B&N also offers a good publishing deal: 70% flat rate on all books.
Sales & Royalty ReportingC
Amazon’s reporting system is inconsistent and confusing, although it does have up-to-the-minute sales figures. Amazon’s staff does not reply promptly (or at all) to sales/royalty report questions. Reports seem to indicate book sales at unauthorized prices, making me wonder whether Amazon is ripping me off.		A
Apple’s reporting system is updated daily. Reports can be viewed its iTunes Connect website as well as in an extremely well designed iOS app.		B
B&N’s reporting system is minimal but accurate.
Final GradeB
The only reason Amazon gets such a good grade is because it sells a lot of books. Its royalty structure sucks, but I can still earn more there for most titles than anywhere else.		B
Apple’s fair royalty rate and reporting help it score well, but its disappointing sales figures and inconsistent review process keep it from getting a better grade.		C
B&N is a nice platform, but low sales keep it from getting a better grade. In all honesty, if it weren’t for the fact that publishing there was so easy, I probably would’t bother.

Of course, it remains to be seen how well my iBooks 2 interactive (enhanced) books do on the iBookstore, since Apple is taking so damn long to approve them.

Do you have any experience with any of these publishing platforms? If so, what have you observed? Share your thoughts in the Comments for this post.

The iBooks Author Gamble

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Taking a chance and not liking what I see so far.

iBooks IconIn late February and early March, I spent about 2 weeks porting my existing 242-page iBooks Author book to iBooks Author software for publication as an iBooks 2-compatible interactive (or “enhanced”) ebook.

Moving over the text wasn’t a huge deal — mostly copy and paste, followed by the application of styles I’d created or modified for my custom iBooks Author template. But rather than simply copy and paste the 100+ screenshots that are part of the print, epub, and Kindle format books, I decided to rely on videos to tell the story. So I spent most of that time recording a total of 3 hours of original video content based on the numbered step-by-step instructions in the book. I also used the Gallery widget and created an illustrated Glossary.

The final book turned out to be 150 pages and 1.3 GB in size. And it looked awesome (if I do say so myself) — the perfect example of how a iBooks Author could be used to create how-to content.

The Waiting Begins

Final Count
It took 55 days for this book to be approved by Apple.

I submitted the files to Apple via iTunes Connect on Sunday and began waiting for approval.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday — I spent the week waiting. It’s now Friday and I’m still waiting.

In iTunes Connect, the book’s status remains:

Book In Review. This book is currently being reviewed for quality assurance.

A New Week brings New Developments

Final Count
It took 75 days for this book to be approved by Apple.

I’d already committed to converting my Making Movies book to iBooks Author format. Because the video for that book already existed — I used video clips taken from the example movie — the creation process was much quicker. I figure I put a total of 10 hours into the conversion process. I submitted it today.

And that’s when I discovered two things:

  • Apple no longer allows submissions of books created with iBooks Author 1.0 (or 1.0.1). It requires the latest version, released the other day, iBooks Author 1.1, which includes support for the new iPad. My iBooks Author book was created with the previous version. Is that what’s holding up approval?
  • A warning appeared on screen when I attempted to upload my 233 MB book, telling me that Apple recommends that books be no larger than 200 MB because some users might have trouble downloading a larger book file. My iBooks Author book was considerably larger than this. Is that what’s holding up approval?

Of course, there’s no way of knowing. Apple’s iTunes Connect/iBookstore support is absolutely dismal. If you ask a question, you’re lucky to get a response in less than a week — if you get any response at all. And that response is likely to be “canned” — in other words, boilerplate text possibly chosen at random by the support person who handled your request.

Rejection Could Be Painful

And nagging away at the back of my mind is a blog post by Seth Godin where he reported that his book had been rejected from the iBookstore because it contained links to printed books on Amazon.com.

While my book doesn’t contain any offensive links — at least I don’t think it does — what if Apple decides to reject it because it’s too big? In the wrong format? They don’t like my videos?

All I can think of is the hours and hours of work I put into that edition, possibly wasted on the whim of some reviewer at Apple.

Apple Needs to Get Serious

Today I read a blog post on TUAW about the antitrust lawsuit the U.S. Department of Justice is apparently mounting against Apple. In it was this line:

Apple says that it wants to sell as many ebooks as possible, which is totally believable since the company is still a relative bit player in the ebook market.

From where I sit, I don’t see Apple being very serious about this at all. If Apple were serious, it would have a much better process in place to review and approve iBookstore submissions. After all, you can’t “sell as many ebooks as possible” if dozens or hundreds of them are stalled in the approval process day after day for a week or more. It wouldn’t be rejecting ebooks because it doesn’t like the links they include. And it certainly wouldn’t generate frustration and dissatisfaction among content creators — the people actually creating the books they supposedly want to sell.

Call Me an Idiot

I’ll beat a few of you to the punchline by admitting that I look like an idiot.

Back in January, when everyone was voicing outrage over the iBooks Author EULA, I wrote a blog post that told people they were basically worrying about nothing. In response to concerns about the approval process, I said:

I see Apple’s approval process as a GOOD thing. Right now, there’s nothing stopping anyone from publishing any crap they want as an ebook and distributing through services like Amazon Kindle. This is a far cry from publishing as we’ve known it, where only authors and works approved and edited by an experienced, professional publishing company team would be published. Apple’s review process helps weed out the crap and make its library of content more valuable to iBookstore shoppers. While some folks might be fearful that Apple will not approve their work, I’m not — and you shouldn’t be either. People who can turn out quality work should have nothing to worry about as far as the approval process goes.

Now there is some concern over Apple using this power to censor content. For example, perhaps they refuse to publish a book that says negative things about Apple or its founders. (Remember how they pulled all of a certain publisher’s books out of the Apple Store after they published an unflattering biography of Steve Jobs some years back?) I’m not terribly worried about that, but I do admit that it is a possibility. Obviously, if there are documented examples of Apple not approving something that should be approved, I’d be willing to revisit this point. For now, however, I don’t think it’s an issue.

Yes, I’m an idiot.

I didn’t realize that Apple’s approval process had the potential to be slow and unfair.

I naively assumed that Apple was concerned with quality — after all, isn’t that what’s holding up my book: a quality review? And quality didn’t worry me because I know I can create quality work.

But what if it’s some other criteria that Apple’s reviewers are concerned with? Something other than links to Amazon.com? File size, file format. Or, worse yet, something I can’t fix? And how will I know? When will I know?

Every day that book isn’t in the iBookstore is a day that I — and my partner, Apple — don’t sell any copies.

What to Do?

What’s the right answer? The right approach?

Well, I can tell you one thing for sure: I’m not going to waste another second of my time assembling yet another title in iBooks Author and submitting it to the void via iTunes Connect.

Instead, I’ll wait — as if I have any other option — and see approach. And I’ll use this experience to guide me for future submissions created with iBooks Author.

Got any iBook Author/iBookstore stories you want to share? Comment on this post.

March 19. 2012 Update: It has now been more than two weeks since I submitted my first iBooks Author-created book for approval to the iBookstore. I am still waiting for approval. This is not a good sign, folks. If you’ve already gone through the approval process, please take a moment to tell us how long it took. And if you’re waiting, please let us know how long you’ve been waiting. I’ll update this when (or if?) my book is approved.

March 28, 2012 Update: I finally heard from Apple about the first book I submitted. It had a number of trademark-related issues that needed to be resolved. I wrote about them here.

May 1, 2012 Update: While I was traveling, my iBooks Author book was finally approved. I believe the final count of days until approval was about 55. I removed the count up timer. My Making Movies book has still not been approved. I feel completely idiotic that I actually believed my books would be reviewed within a week.

May 23, 2012 Update: My Making Movies book was finally approved. I believe the final count of days until approved was 75. The last 3 weeks was spent nagging Apple to explain why it was holding back the book for metadata issues without putting a “ticket” on it.