It’s been a long time coming but Apple Books for Authors has now launched and allows non-Mac users to publish directly to Apple Books.
Apple previously permitted only users of iOS devices to go direct. The company renamed its ebook offering from iBooks in 2018 and relaunched as Apple Books. Apple’s share of the ebook market worldwide is reckoned to be under 10% while Amazon’s Kindle platform is the dominant leader by far with over 80% of the total.
However, some authors do well on Apple and the new portal is certainly welcome, although it would be a much more welcome development if Apple actually made their bookstore more easily accessible for consumers.
Apple Books for Authors does offer some significant benefits for indie writers and self-publishers. The rate of royalties is 70% at all price points so, for example, you can net $0.70 on a $0.99 ebook, which is twice the cash offered by Kindle Direct Publishing.
Another benefit is that Apple Books does not charge any of the so-called delivery fees that Amazon levies on authors according to the file size of their ebooks. There are no delivery fees on KDP ebooks at 35% royalties but for 70% royalties they charge $0.15 per MB (£0.10 per MB in the UK) and that can add up to a substantial amount on an illustrated ebook.
Apple Books also offers authors the option to price ebooks permanently free.
To publish ebooks though Apple Books for Authors you do still have to set up an iTunes Connect account.
More details about publishing direct with Apple Books can be found on the new website.
You can, of course, also publish to Apple Books through the usual ebook distributors such as Draft2digital or PublishDrive.
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