Well, as an author whose romance ebooks have been accepted for sale in the Apple iBookstore for the iPad, I’m pleased as punch, however, there’s a rather large flaw that I can’t help feeling is going to be detrimental to the sales figures for my books.
iBook appears to be purely an app and not a physical site like Amazon.com, so the casual user can’t browse a site and make a decision that way. They have to do everything via the app on their iPad, presumably because you have to have an iPad in order to read the book anyway. That’s fine, except I’m a British author without an iPad, and even if I had an iPad, the iBookstore isn’t available to readers outside the US (Kindle, here we go again, in about a year, Apple will wake up and realise that people OUTSIDE the US also read and write ebooks!). Therefore, I have NO way of checking whether my books are on the virtual shelves of the iBookstore or not, so I can’t promote them… which brings me onto the next issue…
Since this is purely an app, I don’t have anything to link to. I can’t give potential purchasers a link to encourage sales, which means I can’t promote my books on iBookstore with any real chance of success (especially since I can’t actually check they’re there!), which leaves me somewhat twiddling my thumbs. Seriously, Apple, grow a bit of sense. Most books sales are driven by promotional efforts of either the publisher, book store or author. Since I’m just an author on my lonesome, I drive all the sales myself. I spend time on the Amazon.com Kindle forums, on my twitter, on my site and my blogs, posting links, reviews and excerpts of my books to drive readers towards buying them… I can’t do that with iBookstore. Effectively, you’ve tied my promotional hands behind my back. Since I don’t even know for sure that the books are even up on your iBookstore (smashwords say that they’ve been shipped, but that doesn’t mean they’re on there, believe me. I’ve had my books shipped to Barnes & Noble for a long time now and they’re still not on the site!) I can’t even stick a little something on my website to say they’re also available on iBookstore.
It all seems rather stupid. Plus, I agree with the thousands of users of iPhone and iPod Touch that they should also be able to use this iBook app for their phones. The ePub format can easily be used for such small reading devices and you’re restricting your market by denying them. Even Amazon Kindle has a PC version you can download now. I know, I use it.
Please, Apple, wake up and see that you’re not really helping authors by not allowing us to even see if the books are on your store and not giving us a way of linking to them to promote!
I guess I’ll just have to keep pushing my promotional efforts at the sites which do let me see my books – Amazon Kindle, Kobo Books, Smashwords, Fictionwise and my own site.
Grr… and I had such high hopes for Apple iBookstore too!
