iBooks Author: iBookstore publishing overview

You can submit your book for publication on the iBookstore, or export it in a variety of formats and distribute it yourself. Before you can publish to the iBookstore, you need to do the following:

• Get an Apple ID (a user name you can use to shop the iTunes Store, log in to iCloud, and more). If you don’t have an Apple ID or aren’t sure if you have one, go to the My Apple ID website.

• Sign up for a Free or Paid Books Account. You can sign up during the publishing process (after you click Publish). Signing up for an account is free.

  • Free Books Account: If you are going to offer only books for free, create a Free Books Account. If you create a Free Books Account and decide to sell books, you need to create a Paid Books Account.

  • Paid Books Account: To sell books on the iBookstore, you need a Paid Books Account (you can still offer books for free if you like). With a Paid Books Account, you need to provide banking and tax information so that you can receive payments for the books you sell on the iBookstore. After you create your Paid Books Account, sign in and activate your contract.

• Download iTunes Producer, the application you use to deliver your book to the iBookstore. You can download iTunes Producer for free as part of the publishing process.

• Create a sample book (required with a Paid Books Account) for customers to view for free before deciding to purchase your book. During the publishing process, iBooks Author can create a sample based on one of your book’s chapters. Or, you can create a sample manually.

After iBooks Author creates your book file for you, make sure the file is no larger than 2 GB (the iBookstore file size limit). Also, note the following:

• Readers using a 3G connection can’t download books larger than 20 MB. If you create your sample book manually, make sure you keep the size of your sample book smaller than 20 MB.

• The larger the book, the longer it takes to download, and the more iPad storage it uses. Movies in particular can be very large. For best results, keep your book file smaller than 1 GB.

Books submitted to the iBookstore using a Paid Books Account can be protected by Apple’s proprietary FairPlay DRM (digital rights management) system, which helps prevent unauthorized duplication of your book. (Movies and audio included in HTML5 widgets are not DRM-protected.)